The electoral debacles in the Hindi heartland has pushed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah’s Bengal rallies in to realms of uncertainty, party insiders say.
At least Modi’s much hyped Siliguri rally is not happening immediately. The State BJP leadership has been intimated by the Prime Minister’s office on this count, sources at the Muralidhar Sen Lane (BJP’s State headquarters) said.
The Prime Minister had expressed his wishes to address 5 rallies during the highly bandied Rath Yatras of the saffron outfit. But for a legal tangle — pending police permission — the three Yatras each commencing from Coochbehar, Birbhum and Kakdwip (Ganga Sagar) were scheduled to start on December 7, 9 and 14 before culminating at a grand rally in Kolkata on January 23.
The Prime Minister who was supposed to hold his first rally on December 14 during the course of the Yatra at Siliguri would not be available now for the mega show as he would be busy on the said day somewhere in Uttar Pradesh, senior State leader Sayantan Basu said. Others said he would be visiting Rae Bareli next week.
Following the debacle in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh and the prospects in UP not looking favourable either in the wake of Congress, Samajwadi Party and Mayawati resurgent camaraderie the saffron outfit wants to fortify its rear before leaping into bigger adventures in Bengal and the remaining part of the East and North East, insiders say.
“The Prime Minister and Amit Shah ji will be required more in the Hindi belt because the real number of seats are likely to come from these places. Clearly Bengal gets relegated to a secondary position for now,” a senior leader said adding quickly “we will till then do the spade work for the other leaders to come here later on. We did well in Jangalmahal and some other areas during the panchayat elections not because Prime Minister or Mr Shah was coming every day here but because our workers had been giving full effort there.”
But considering the BJP’s fading fortunes and its ability to provide any better umbrella than the Left Front --- against the Trinamool Congress’ aggressive politics --- coming under cloud in Bengal would its support base increase further as it had been till the recent past?
The State BJP leaders tend to evade these questions for now. For the last couple of days none of the senior trio Rahul Sinha, Mukul Roy and State party president Dilip Ghosh were available for comments. The only thing the leaders say that the Prime Minister’s meeting is not happening for now.