BJP National General Secretary Arun Singh announces names of candidates in New Delhi on Sunday. (Source: Twitter/@ANI) The BJP on Sunday released its list of candidates for the third and fourth phases of the Assembly elections in West Bengal, giving tickets to several of its sitting MPs and recent entrants from the Trinamool Congress.
Besides 63 names in West Bengal — for 27 seats out of 31 voting in the third phase on April 6 and 36 out of 44 voting in the fourth phase on April 10 – the party also announced candidates for 112 seats in Kerala, and 17 seats each in Tamil Nadu and Assam.
Among the BJP candidates in Bengal are Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta and former Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India Ashok Lahiri, who will contest the Tarakeswar and Alipurduars seats respectively.
In Kerala, the party has given tickets to the former head of Delhi Metro E Sreedharan, and former Kerala DGP Jacob Thomas. It has also fielded its Rajya Sabha MP and actor-turned-politician Suresh Gopi, its Kerala unit chief K Surendran, former Governor Kummanam Rajashekaran, and former Union Minister and Rajya Sabha MP Alphons Kannanthanam. Kerala votes on April 6.
Besides Dasgupta, three other BJP MPs will contest the elections in Bengal – among them is Union Minister and Asansol MP Babul Supriyo, who will take on TMC heavyweight and state Minister Aroop Biswas at the Tollygunge constituency in Kolkata.
Hooghly MP Locket Chatterjee and Cooch Behar MP Nisith Pramanik will contest the Chunchura and Dinhata Vidhan Sabha seats respectively. Convener of the BJP intellectual cell, Rantideb Sengupta, has been fielded from Howrah Dakshin.
Former TMC Minister Rajib Banerjee, who switched to the BJP recently, will contest the Domjur seat. TMC MLA and face of the party’s anti-land acquisition agitation in Singur, Rabindranath Bhattacharya, will be the BJP candidate from the seat. Bhattacharya went to the BJP last week after the TMC denied him a ticket.
TMC MLAs-turned-BJP leaders Prabir Ghoshal and Dipak Haldar will contest the Uttarpara and Diamond Harbour seats respectively.
The BJP has also fielded popular Bengali actors Yash Dasgupta (Chanditala), Payel Sarkar (Behala Purba), and Tanushree Chakraborty (Shyampukur), all of whom joined the party recently. Television actor Anjana Basu will contest the Sonarpur Dakshin seat.
The choice of candidates like Swapan Dasgupta and Ashok Lahiri reflects an attempt by the BJP to reach out to the more cosmopolitan and educated sections of Bengali voters, who may not be attracted by the BJP’s hard Hindutva image. The party’s spectacular success in the Lok Sabha elections of 2019 was not reflected adequately in Kolkata and among educated upper caste voters, many of whom were horrified by the vandalisation of the bust of Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar during a roadshow by then BJP president Amit Shah.
BJP leaders said the choice of candidates was intended to counter the Trinamool Congress allegation that the BJP is an “outsider party”.
“This shows our confidence that we will win this election in West Bengal with a two-thirds majority. We want to tell the electorate that we have people with experience and expertise to govern the state once we form the government,” BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya told The Indian Express.
TMC spokesperson and MP Prof Sougata Ray, however, said in Kolkata: “It is clear from the list that the BJP does not have enough candidates to fight the Assembly polls and that’s why it is relying on its sitting MPs. It has also given tickets to former TMC leaders and MLAs, which sends the same signal. The BJP is struggling to find candidates.”
Soon after the list was announced, several of those who were disappointed rebelled against the party. Among them were former West Bengal Minister and Mayor of Kolkata Sovan Chatterjee and his close associate Baishakhi Banerjee. Chatterjee, upset at being denied the chance to contest his Behala Purba seat, is learnt to have written to Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh that he no longer wished to remain in the party. Banerjee wrote on Facebook that she was “humiliated”, and predicted that “conspiracies and treachery” would not go far.
The BJP’s Alipurduar district president Ganga Prasad Sharma complained he was kept “in the dark” about the tickets to Ashok Lahiri and Bishal Lama (Kalchini), and said he did not “approve of them”. The party’s Hooghly district chief Subir Nag, apparently upset at the candidature of Locket Chatterjee, wrote on Facebook that he had been “betrayed” and was quitting politics.