Bengal civic polls: BJP conducts ward-wise survey in Kolkata to learn about people’s grievances

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in West Bengal has decided to conduct ward to ward survey in Kolkata to know about grievances and demands of people before the upcoming civic polls. A team formed to carry out the exercise has already started work in some wards, party leaders said.

BJP leaders hope to find grievances against the ruling party Trinamool Congress by listing “undelivered promises” that were made by the party before coming to power in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation in 2010. BJP claims that after Sovan Chatterjee – who is now with BJP – resigned from the post of the Mayor, the overall condition of KMC kept deteriorating.

Current Mayor Firhad Hakim though said that such “false allegations” won’t give the BJP any votes as “people have seen the work which we have done”.

BJP leaders seem to have taken a lesson from the last couple of elections in West Bengal, Jharkhand, and Maharashtra where the party lost badly after the introduction of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and talks on National Register of Citizens (NRC), which have been criticised for being to be discriminatory towards Muslims. Thus the state BJP seems to be more intent on carrying out campaigns on everyday issues faced by people in various municipal wards rather than channelling their efforts into CAA-NRC propaganda.