Where are the BJP’s swanky raths for the West Bengal rath-yatra secretly parked?

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seems to be well aware of the fact that its elaborate plans for the rath-yatra in West Bengal have suffered a temporary setback as the government denied it permission and the matter is now with the Calcutta High Court.

A division bench of the High Court asked the Mamata Banerjee government to discuss the matter with the BJP authorities and inform the court about its decision by Friday.

The delay in flagging off the rath-yatra seems to be the reason behind keeping the three raths outside Bengal. There is after all, fear among the BJP workers that the raths may be attacked by Trinamool Congress workers if they get to learn where they have been parked.

In fact, one of the raths, earlier brought to north Bengal’s Siliguri and taken to Cooch Behar, has been sent back to Bihar, from where it had entered Bengal after setting off from Noida. A second one has been kept in Jharkhand (and asked by the BJP authorities to not move further) and the third one has not yet been taken out from the Noida workshop.

Super swanky raths

These raths are state-of-the-art Volvo buses with a double bed, a sofa-cum-bed, table, chairs and a toilet. There is also a “stage” that can be folded up when not being used. The air-conditioned buses are equipped with WiFi, GPS tracking system and so on.

When the “raths” are halted at various places, the folded stage can be opened and fixed on top of the bus and there’s enough space for two to three speakers to stand on the stage and address the crowd. This means that apart from the bigger public meetings that the BJP has organised along the routes of the three rath-yatras that cover all 42 Lok Sabha constituencies, there is also scope for stopping the raths anywhere to address meetings by using this temporary stage.

There is also a “technical team” that is travelling with each bus. Apart from the driver, there’s a sound engineer, mechanic, a general technician along with an assistant. All of them are residents of Uttar Pradesh and members of the BJP, sources said.

How the Volvo bus-raths were consciously kept outside Bengal

The first of the three raths was to be flagged off from Cooch Behar district in north Bengal by the party’s national president Amit Shah on December 7. This rath had started off from Noida and entered West Bengal’s Siliguri via Bihar’s Kishenganj. This was taken to a well-guarded place in Cooch Behar area after being securely driven through the convoy of a BJP Member of Parliament from Bengal.

However, the BJP authorities decided to drive the rath away from this place once it was clear that the rath-yatra would not take place at the scheduled time and place. Sources said that the rath was taken to Bihar again and it was decided to keep it parked there till a green-signal comes on starting the rath-yatra.

The second rath – scheduled to start from South 24 Parganas district in south Bengal – was to arrive in West Bengal from Jharkhand and travel to Kakdwip via Kolkata. It was to start off here on December 9. This rath too has been kept in Jharkhand for the time being. Senior BJP leaders were asked not to proceed further when it was learnt that the rath-yatra schedule had been affected.

The third rath was to start from Birbhum’s Tarapith on December 14. Sources said that this one hasn’t been taken out of the Noida workshop yet.