The Bengal BJP should grow not only numerically but also ideologically by banking on the principles upheld by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who wants the party to break free from vote-bank politics pursued by the other outfits and concentrate on all round development of the nation, an assemblage of intellectuals and professionals who met on Friday in a brainstorming session concurred.
Keeping in tune with the road map shown by the Prime Minister and “ready to take up the challenge in 2016” Assembly elections, the State BJP is planning to widen its base among various sections of the society, party Rajya Sabha member Chandan Mitra told mediapersons on the sidelines of the meeting.
“Bengal had declined in every respect: From culture to economy and from education to industry in the past 36 years of left and Trinamool Congress rule. This trend must be reversed and Bengal must be restored to its former glory. We want to arrest this decline with the help of the people from all walks of life. We want to work together with everyone who wants to change the current regime,” he said calling upon the intellectuals to prepare a road map for the saffron outfit so that the party could address the real need of the hour.
The Friday’s session was attended amongst others by magician PC Sorcar, former MP Bikram Sarkar, actor Nimu Bhowmick, intellectuals like Chandreyi Alam, retired bureaucrats as also a galaxy of businessmen and professionals.
Terming the meeting as highly successful, one the BJP leaders said such meetings would be held “on frequent intervals and will be organised throughout the State so as to bring the people together with the BJP.” Ruing that “instead of industrialising Bengal the political parties that ruled the State have de-industrialised it”, he said “the BJP has to take upon itself the challenge of rebuilding the State’s economy.”
There was an express need to assist the saffron outfit to structure itself for which the “intellectuals and other like-minded people will have to come out with ideas so that a viable alternative can be created in Bengal” after ousting the Trinamool from power, he maintained.
like political activities and agitations against flawed policies of a Government, intellectual movements also played a definite role in ideological expansion of a outfit, Mitra said, adding “intellectual movement is needed because it creates legitimacy in the people’s mind.” The Friday’s meeting provided a free-thinking forum that would bring people from different sections of the society together, Dr Mitra summing up the speeches given by the other speakers said adding “this is the only way to build the BJP in Bengal both in numbers and in quality so that we can bring about the end of a misrule of 36 years shared by the left and the Trinamool.”
“The message of Prime Minister Modi has to be implemented to let Bengal flourish economically, politically, culturally as well as industrially once again,” he maintained.