Nadda meets leaders to boost BJP before next year panchayat poll in Bengal
On arrival at the city airport on Tuesday night, state top leadership greeted him and then most of them met him at a city hotel where he stayed overnight.
Kolkata: Amid differences in the rank and file in the leadership and grassroots level in the saffron brigade, BJP national president Jagat Prakash Nadda arrived on a two-day visit in West Bengal in a bid to boost the organisation before the forthcoming panchayat elections across the state.
On arrival at the city airport on Tuesday night, state top leadership greeted him and then most of them met him at a city hotel where he stayed overnight.
Party sources said state president Sukanta Mazumder, his predecessor and MP Dilip Ghosh, Amit Malviya, Locket Chatterjee and opposition leader of the state assembly and Nandigram MLA Suvendhu Adhikari, Agnimitra Paul called on Nadda and discussed party affairs and his itinerary in next 48 hours.
Among this programme of the day, Nadda is expected to inaugurate a session of the state executive committee meeting at the National Library complex this afternoon and address the state leadership.
The BJP, after having won 18 Parliament seats out of 42 in the 2019 Lok Sabha poll and 77 seats in the state assembly elections in 2021, was facing a huge problem in keeping the party’s functionaries under one umbrella.
Defection from the top level to the grassroots was also plaguing and subsequent poor results in various level state elections, including Lok Sabha and assembly bypolls.
Party sources said the visit of Nadda assumed a significance at a time when the Saffron brigade was facing double edged knife like alleged onslaught from the ruling TMC and defection in the party.
The BJP was now trying to recover the lost footing ahead of next year’s panchayat elections, they said.
Therefore Nadda’s visit is expected to boost the party’s leadership in the top to rally them to reorganise the grassroots followers, who fear fresh onslaught if resurfaced with saffron colour,
they added.
Nadda is expected to start the day with a visit to Chinsurah in the Hooghly’s Rishi Aurobindo
Ashram, and then to the Rashbehari Bose Research Institute at Chandannagar, also in the
Hooghly district before returning to the city for this evening party programme.
