Firmly fixing its sights on West Bengal after victory in Bihar, the BJP in Bengal on Wednesday said Union Home Minister Amit Shah and party national president J P Nadda will visit the state every month till the end of assembly elections. Elections to the 294-member West Bengal Assembly are due in April-May next year. The two senior BJP leaders will visit the state separately every month to take stock of the party organisation ahead of the elections, state BJP president Dilip Ghosh said.
"Amit Shah and J P Nadda will visit the state separately every month till the assembly elections are over. The dates are yet to be finalised. Their regular visits will energise the party workers," Ghosh told reporters.
Shah is likely to visit the state for two consecutive days a month and Nadda for three days, party sources said.
After catapulting the NDA to power following a stupendous performance by the BJP, the saffron party has made it clear that mission Bengal tops their next target.
Shah, who missed campaigning in Bihar, made a two-day trip to Bengal starting November 5 to oversee BJPs preparedness for the state polls.
BJP president J P Nadda was scheduled to accompany Shah to Bengal, but his visit was cancelled a night before.
During the visit Shah met the family members of a BJP worker Madan Ghorai allegedly killed in judicial custody last month in Patashpur in Purba Medinipur district and hit out at Chief Minister Mamata Banewrjee over alleged minority appeasement and deteriorating law and order. He had also demanded a white paper on political killings in the state.
The Bengal BJP chief also lashed out at the Congress-CPI (M) alliance, saying both the parties have been rejected by the people of the state long back.
"The people of West Bengal have given chances to the Congress, the CPI(M) and the TMC. All the three parties have failed to live up to the expectations of the masses, which will now be fulfilled by the BJP," he said.
With an eye on the elections, the BJP Tuesday divided the state into five organisational zones and put central leaders in charge of them, party sources said.
Senior BJP leaders Sunil Deodhar, Vinod Tawde, Dushyant Gautam, Harish Dwivedi and Vinod Sonkar have been handpicked by the party top brass to head the North Bengal, Rarh Banga (south-western districts), Nabadwip, Midnapore and Kolkata organisational zones, they said.
Deodhar, Tawde, Gautam and Sonkar are likely to conduct party meetings in their respective zones during the day.
BJP national general secretary Dushyant Gautam, who has been given charge of the Kolkata zone, exuded confidence after arriving in the city that the saffron party will come to power in the state in the assembly elections.
After having a limited presence in the politically polarised state for decades, the BJP has emerged as the main rival of the ruling Trinamool Congress by winning 18 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal in the 2019 general elections.
With the BJP's strength increasing in the state in the last few years, party leaders have exuded confidence that it will be able to end Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's 10-year rule in the 2021 assembly elections.
