The Bengal BJP is shifting the September 6-7 State committee meeting from Siliguri to Kolkata apparently with a view to provide additional impetus on the upcoming by-elections for two Assembly seats of Chowringhee and Basirhat Dakshin.
The bypolls to the two seats are scheduled to take place on September 13. While the heart of downtown Kolkata constitutes the Chowringhee constituency, Basirhat Dakshin seat falls in North 24 Parganas where the saffron party fared extremely well in the recently concluded general elections.In fact in the lok Sabha elections BJP candidate Samik Bhattacharya took a lead of more than 30,000 votes from Basirhat Dakshin Assembly segment.
Chowringhee is adjacent to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Bhawanipore Assembly segment from where the BJP candidate Tathagato Roy had taken a lead in the lok Sabha elections.The shifting of the crucial State committee meeting to Kolkata from the North Bengal city of Siliguri shows the kind of importance attached by the BJP central leadership to the by-elections whose results could go a long way in determining the 2016 Assembly election results.
BJP national president Amit Shah would attend the second day of the State committee meeting on September 7 and would also hold a mass rally that day, party sources said on Tuesday. That the venue of the meeting and the rally falls in the Chowringhee constituency itself will further boost its chances in the by-elections, experts said.
On Monday State BJP president Rahul Sinha had said that the central leadership of the party was taking the by-elections very seriously which could be proved by the fact that Shah had sought a detailed report on the coming polls from the State unit.“I am very happy and enthused as the central leadership is focused on Bengal,” he said, adding names of the two candidates for the by-elections would soon be announced.