Unqualified people are heading the BJP in Bengal. Only with qualified people at the helm can BJP take on the Trinamool Congress: Bengal BJP Vice President, Chandra Kumar Bose

Barely a week before president of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Amit Shah’s visit to West Bengal, tension between the senior party leadership in the state is out in the open.

Party insiders in Bengal know that the Bengal BJP’s president Dilip Ghosh and the state unit’s vice president Chandra Kumar Bose are not particularly on great terms. But Bose has now openly claimed that that there is no democracy in the state BJP. Chandra Kumar Bose, Subhas Chandra Bose’s grand nephew, had contested as a BJP candidate against Mamata Banerjee in the 2016 Assembly elections.

On June 20, Bose tweeted about the crisis brewing in the party with rumours about the tenure of Dilip Ghosh as the BJP’s West Bengal president.
Speaking to The Bengal Story, Bose said, “These rumours have been doing the rounds for the past few months. Last month Dilip Ghosh claimed that he will remain president till December, while Kailash Vijayvargiya claimed that Ghosh may continue in the present post till 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Some functionaries in the state unit also aired rumours about rejig in the state leadership following the panchayat polls. These are giving out a bad message to the people while making it confusing for the party workers to work on ground.”

Bose said that discussing this openly doesn’t mean he was criticising Ghosh. It meant that he wanted the party’s senior leadership from the Centre to clarify the stand on the matter.

According to the Bengal BJP vice president, “The party should take disciplinary action against those planting these rumours. But no one is playing down these rumours either.”

 

He said that unless there is a message to maintain discipline, it wouldn’t be possible for the BJP to take the ruling Trinamool Congress in Bengal head on.

Accusing the party of “favouritism”, he claimed that “unqualified” people are leading the party. “Only with qualified people in the organisation, we can pose ourselves as a viable alternative to the people of West Bengal. Only, then can we get a chance to rule the state. But if the organisation is in such a condition, I do not think BJP will be able to make any difference.”

Bose also distanced himself from Dilip Ghosh’s “encounter theory” claiming that it was the latter’s “personal opinion”. On June 20, Ghosh had said that the Trinamool Congress workers should be ready to face “encounters” and that BJP would avenge the death of their party workers. The following day, chief minister Mamata Banerjee called the BJP a militant organisation.

“This ‘encounter theory’ may be his personal opinion but many in the state leadership do not share this view. I do not think that if Trinamool Congress uses terror as a weapon, we (the BJP) will have to follow the same path.”

He added that unless the party makes itself acceptable to all, the Prime Minister’s dream ‘Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas’ cannot be fulfilled. He said that “Bengalis are peace-loving by nature, and by making such comments, we may alienate ourselves from certain sections of the people.”

“I have written to the BJP President Amit Shah earlier too, so have others. When he visits West Bengal within a few days, I will speak to him about these issues. I expect other leaders to speak to him as well”, he said.

 

Cover picture: BJP President Amit Shah, West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh and West Bengal BJP vice president Chandra Kumar Bose

Leave A Reply

Your email address will not be published.