Navigating Factional Challenges: Amit Shah and J.P. Nadda Forge Poll Management Team Amid Concerns

Amit Shah, the union home minister, and J.P. Nadda, the president of the BJP, established a 15-member poll management committee on Tuesday. However, considering the structure of the party and the factionalism within the Bengal BJP unit, some party leaders are skeptical about the initiative's ability to add 35 Lok Sabha seats from the state to Narendra Modi's collection.

Party officials are reluctant to discuss their doubts in public. Some of them privately acknowledge that uniting the opposing factions to fight as one is the greater challenge facing the state BJP.

The Shah-Nadda team has stacked the new committee with notable figures like Suvendu Adhikari, Rahul Sinha, Sukanta Majumdar, and Dilip Ghosh. However, the state BJP is debating whether or not these leaders could work together to take on Trinamul in Bengal.

"Naddaji managed to bring the rivals together, but he did so without resolving their disagreement. According to a senior BJP leader who spoke on the condition of anonymity, "that prompted Amitji to step in and issue a stern message urging the warring leaders to come together and work cohesively for the Lok Sabha elections."

Shah met with a few leaders at a hotel in New Town on Tuesday, and he also had separate discussions with Majumdar and Adhikari. According to a BJP source, the Union home minister informed the pair that, while he wasn't interested in knowing whether Rahul or Dilip were good or bad, the party would not be able to win the 400 seats needed nationally if they lost even one Bengali seat.

Shah emphasized Ghosh's role in the 2019 elections, the source continued, when Bengal added 18 MPs to the party's coffers. Shah made it plain that the BJP high command was not paying any attention to the complaints against Ghosh by voicing his opinions in front of Nadda.

The source stated, "Amitji made it clear what he wants the Bengal leadership to do by asking Dilip-da to take a first-row seat during the meeting. Both Majumdar and Adhikari made several complaints against Dilip Ghosh in the last two years."

Shah is reported to have told the Bengal team, "Dilip Ghosh has the experience of giving the party 18 seats from Bengal and all should work together."

Ghosh and Majumdar's differences are no longer a party secret. An insider claims that Sinha and Ghosh have been marginalized since Majumdar and Adhikari have emerged as pivotal figures in leading the BJP's state unit since September 2021.

Their rooms at the party's state headquarters in Calcutta were recently demolished without their consent in order to make renovations. When Ghosh told reporters he should have given notice before his office was demolished, the party was embarrassed.

The district units are no better if the internal strife among the party's state leadership is a cause for concern. Since August, the Bengal unit of the BJP has instituted organizational changes that have resulted in factionalism and internal conflicts in a number of districts.

October saw BJP workers from Barasat in North 24-Parganas demonstrate outside the party's Salt Lake headquarters, accusing a few district office-bearers of being "Trinamul stooges" and protesting the appointment of them.

Because of his ties to Trinamul, we do not want Tarun Ghosh to take over as the head of the Barasat unit. A protester had stated, "The BJP cannot mount a united front in the Lok Sabha polls if people like him are given important posts."

Samik Bhattacharya, a BJP state spokesperson, denounced the demonstration and declared that "indiscipline would not be tolerated."

Outside the party's Calcutta headquarters, some BJP supporters recently set posters featuring Majumdar, Amitabha Chakraborty, the party's general secretary (organization), and co-minder Amit Malviya on fire. They asserted that older workers were being left out. The BJP unit from south Calcutta wrote to Nadda expressing their displeasure with Ghosh and Sinha's marginalisation.

Junior Union minister Subhas Sarkar was locked for more than an hour in a Bankura district party office in September by about fifty BJP workers who were protesting his autocratic behaviour and holding him accountable for the party's dismal performance in the local civic elections held the previous year and the rural elections this year.

To get away from the angry party workers, Sarkar had to call in the state police.

In 2019, the BJP secured the Lok Sabha seats of Bishnupur and Bankura. In Bankura, it won eight of the twelve Assembly seats in 2021 despite the Mamata wave that swept the state.

Maybe these protests had an impact on Shah and Nadda's thoughts. A state BJP leader claimed that Sarkar and three other Union ministers from Bengal were not included in the committee.

In the run-up to the 2024 elections, sources said that organisational strife among party officials does not bode well, especially in north Bengal's Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, and North Dinajpur, as well as in North 24-Parganas, Murshidabad, Nadia, Bankura, South 24-Parganas, and Calcutta.

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