Amit Shah Takes Leaf Out Of MP Playbook, To Stay Put In Bengal For 8-10 Days A Month Till Polls – Delhi News Daily

Amit Shah to focus on Bengal ahead of polls (PTI file)

It was July 2023, four months before Madhya Pradesh was to go to assembly polls. Anti-incumbency against popular chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s government made it a common perception that Congress is likely to return. A confident Congress saw leaders start lobbying for who should be the chief minister should it win.

In July-end, Union minister Amit Shah came visiting the poll-bound state, taking stock of the situation with only the top leaders in attendance in a closed-door meeting. Citing data, Shah told the BJP leaders that the party would not even match its 2018 tally if it’s left to status quo. Shah made Madhya Pradesh his political laboratory where he would keep coming in almost every weekend or 15 days. He set daily goals for party leaders of state BJP, which he would review from Delhi by night. Between September and mid-November, Shah held 33 meetings in the state. On December 3, when the results came out, BJP had swept Madhya Pradesh once again, arresting the trend.

Now, Shah wants to repeat the formula in West Bengal where election is due early next year. News18 has learnt that the Union home minister wants to go a step further with Bengal, where he is likely to spend eight to ten days in the state every month till the elections are over.

How serious Shah is about Bengal can be gauged from the fact that the BJP has started house hunting for the minister in the New Town area. This is the preferred area of all BJP VVIPs in the state due to its close proximity to the airport and expressway. In the 2021 assembly election, the entire top echelon of BJP, including Shah, operated from a private hotel in New Town area. But this time around, a separate house is being considered for Shah, giving more space and privacy for meetings.  

While Bhupendra Yadav, architect of the 2023 Madhya Pradesh election win among many, has been announced as BJP’s Bengal election in-charge, and former Tripura CM Biplab Deb will be the co-in-charge, Shah will oversee the whole BJP apparatus from New Town and in Delhi.

Like Madhya Pradesh, where Yadav meticulously enforced Shah’s daily and weekly goals for state leaders, BJP hopes to repeat the same in Bengal. However, unlike Congress, TMC is not complacent, many argue. Neither is the organisation strength of Bengal BJP half as strong as that of its MP counterpart.

In 2021, BJP gave the clarion call of “Do Sau Paar”, but managed to win 77 seats. However, due to defections and other changes since then, the current number is 65 MLAs.