Posters exposing the internal tussle between Bharatuya Janata Party’s (BJP) new and traditional workers have been seen in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district on Tuesday.
The BJP, which has been on an overdrive to welcome turncoat leaders and workers from other parties in recent times, has oftentimes witnessed conflict between the newbies and others.
The latest incident has been reported from Gaighata in North 24 Parganas where the “Old BJP workers” put up banners asking the newcomers to be removed.
According to a report by Zee 24 Ghanta, some of the posters said the following:
“Which BJP are we?”
“Thos who were branded as extortionists earlier are BJP’s assets today.”
“Remove corrupt zonal secretaries.”
Interestingly, the messages on every banner and poster ended with “Courtesy: Old BJP”, laying bare the growing conflict in the hindutva camp’s West Bengal unit.
The placards in Gaighata are believed to carry a message to the party leadership as BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta and party’s Bengal spokesperson Shamik Bhattacharya are scheduled to take part in a programme there on Tuesday.
The conflict among the BJP workers were evident in another part of the state as well. On Monday, a rally in Durgapur was rocked by violence between new and old BJP workers.
The engaging parties exchanged clashes over who would sit on the stage with party leaders Dilip Ghosh and Arjun Singh in Durgapur on Monday.
The violence erupted before Ghosh and Singh’s arrival when two lobbies – consisting of the traditional BJP workers and the turncoats from other parties – confronted each other while organising for the event.
The verbal disputes soon led to physical clashes with the workers attacking each other with chairs and sticks. Despite repeated appeals from the local leadership, the party cadres paid no heed and stayed with savagery.
Barrackpore MP Arjun Singh and Dilip Ghosh, the party’s state president in West Bengal, were scheduled to induct a few local leaders, whom the old workers accused of running the coal mafia in the region.
Reportedly, the turncoats wanted the new party leaders to be on the stage with Ghosh and Singh which the opposite lobby refused, leading to conflict.
These developments have come after Home Minister Amit Shah’s fervent tour of West Bengal. During his stay, Shah had welcomed a huge contingent of TMC defectors led by Suvendu Adhikari.
Earlier as well, there were been reports of growing power tussle between the new and old BJP camps ahead of Assembly Elections in West Bengal in 2021.
On his two day tour of the poll-bound state, Shah had categorically asked BJP’s Bengal leadership to be united in their fight against Mamata Banerjee.
But incidents on Monday and Tuesday have again exposed the fault line in the party. With Shah asserting that more TMC leaders will join BJP, how the saffron party censors the internal conflict remains to be seen.