The Bengal BJP leadership appears to have come out of the Ram Mandir campaign for now and walked into the Durga Puja pandals to push forward its ideology.
Believing that the party will definitely return to power in Delhi in 2019 and enter Bengal Assembly through Parliament two years later, the BJP has concentrated on preparing the voters mentally through ideological books. The party is peddling ideological books at Durga Puja pandals this time round.
And aware that the Hindutva flavour was getting repetitive on the ideological platter the State party has decided to bring about some changes in flavour by filling the book racks with biographies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee.
“We will try to reach out to the people through books so that the anti-propaganda generated by the Trinamool Congress is successfully countered,” said a senior leader adding about 2,000 —3,000 book stalls will be put up throughout the State including Kolkata.
“The books will mostly be on our ideological background, lives of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya and Shyama Prasad Mukheree who was a local hero and was even elected from South Kolkata,” said the leader.
Booklets on national register for citizens were also being distributed, sources said “so that misgivings on what it is all about is put out.”
Despite anti-campaign by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on NRC in Assam, “we shall try to tell the actual story of NRC,” the leader said adding it was not directed against Bengalis.
State BJP president Dilip Ghosh said that his party will use Durga Puja pandals to propagate about NRC in Assam and how it is done for the benefit of that state and country, contrary to the propaganda of the TMC. “We are also writing articles on violence and misrule of TMC government and the developmental work done by the Modi government,” he said.
The leader also said that though the party had received requisitions from many parts of the State for setting up stalls “the local Trinamool leadership is disturbing us from doing so. I want to ask if the Left parties are allowed to sell their books why not the BJP.”
For years, political parties particularly the CPI(M) have been setting up stalls outside Puja pandals to sell their books and also as a public relations exercise. Now the BJP follows suit.
Ghosh said the party had already set up stalls in many places. “We are getting support from the locals and hope to increase the number of our stalls to a record number,” he said adding the people will back BJP’s move and not listen to the diktats of the TMC.
“We will get a feel of the general political atmosphere through the sale of the books” because Kolkata itself is likely to witness about 50 lakh people hopping pandals for 24 hours all the 5-6 days the leadership said.
The BJP is targeting more than 22 parliamentary seats in 2019 general elections. While the Chief Minister has said that the TMC will win all the 42 seats, BJP leader Kailash Vijaybargiya said things will be clear in few months time as most of the TMC leaders will not be in a position to contest the polls as they will be in jail in chit fund case.