Kolkata: Ahead of the assembly elections in West Bengal, The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers are up in arms against their own party with multiple incidents of the rebellion being reported from the poll-bound state.
On Friday, BJP workers vandalized the party office in Malda, demanding a candidate of their choice in the constituency, reported news agency ANI.
This is part of a recurring pattern that has been observed in a lot of party units in Bengal, with the cadre rebelling against the distribution of tickets in the Assembly election. Apart from Malda, places like Dum Dum, Jalpaiguri and Asansol saw BJP workers protesting and vandalizing their own party offices.
BJP workers set tyres on fire and chanted slogans against the candidates from Dum Dum and Rajarhat Gopalpur. Similar action was undertaken in Harishchandrapur, Sahapur and Manickchowk too. The angry workers tore down posters of top leaders like Dilip Ghosh and claimed that “corrupt” individuals had been given tickets by the party.
The candidature of Jitendra Tiwary from Pandabeshwar assembly was also opposed by the workers alleging he committed a lot of atrocities on them. They said that they would not campaign for Tiwari, who is a TMC turncoat. The workers also demanded a new candidate for the Pandabeshwar seat and threatened that they would otherwise field an independent candidate against BJP itself.
Some workers even made their way from the Howrah district to protest in front of the party headquarters in Hastings and even hurled stones at the leaders. The unrest made the top leaders huddle together on the seventh floor of the building with the workers not allowing them to leave. Home Minister Amit Shah reportedly had to cut his Assam trip short and head to Bengal to resolve things.
The condition across the state has worsened to such an extent that BJP offices in some areas were closed and the leaders went into hiding. Newslaundry reported that when their team of reporters went to Domjur as part of their election coverage, they could not find a single BJP flag anywhere, as the leaders were hiding from their own party cadre.
The main bone of contention of these irate workers is the fielding of TMC turncoats by the party instead of long-time party loyalists. The workers told Newslaundry that they found it embarrassing to campaign for ex-TMC candidates. Most of these candidates had clashes with BJP workers in the past, the memories of which are still fresh in the workers’ minds. Some workers also had problems with the party giving tickets to candidates who are known for corruption, crime and running illicit businesses.
All this confusion and chaos had been caused by the BJP workers and supporters themselves, who did not hold back in expressing their disappointment (to put it mildly) in the party’s choices of candidates. This agitation, which is going on from Monday, has certainly put a dent in the party’s election plans.