Modi inducts four new ministers from Bengal, with 2024 LS polls in sight

NEW DELHI: Four first time Lok Sabha MPs from West Bengal – Santanu Thakur, John Barla, Nishith Pramanik and Subhash Sarkar -- were inducted into the Narendra Modi cabinet on Wednesday, as part of the Prime Minister’s major reshuffle of his council of ministers.
The move clearly indicates that BJP focus on the state has not been diluted even as it lost the assembly election to Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress recently, barely two years after the party made unprecedented gains in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, bagging 18 of the 42 parliamentary seats.
Two existing ministers of state – Babul Supriyo and Debasri Chaudhury – have been dropped from the cabinet. Supriyo lost his Tollygunj assembly seat in the 2021 assembly polls that he had been put to fight as some of his other colleagues like Locket Chatterjee and Swapan Dasgupta.
Instead of giving up on Bengal, BJP plans to build on the strength of 77 assembly seats it won for the first time in the state, with 2024 Lok Sabha polls in sight. Hoping to regain ground it lost in 2021, the four ministers have been carefully chosen from regions where the party either has a good presence like in north Bengal, and where it could improve on its present strength.
That ignoring Bengal could cost BJP dearly in a state where it is the main opposition party, when reverse migration to the ruling TMC has become a real threat for the saffron camp, it has chosen Thakur from the Matua community, Sarkar from Bankura (Jungle Mahal), Nishith Pramanik (the youngest minister at 35 years) representing the Rajbonshi community from Cooch Behar and John Barla representing the tea garden workers from Alipurduar.
With Barla’s induction, political circles however are curious on whether the Alipuarduar MP’s recent demand for separate Union territory for north Bengal was backed by the party. For, in that case, the BJP unit in Bengal could be wiped out since the people would never support any further splitting of the state.
Bankura MP Sarkar represents Jungle Mahal region where BJP was successful in 2019, but lost ground in the 2021 assembly polls.
Thakur’s induction is seen as an attempt to woo back the second largest SC community in the state, which exhorts influence in at least five Lok Sabha seats in south Bengal, ahead of 2024 elections.
Voting patterns in the assembly elections showed that Matuas did not vote en-bloc for any party and their votes were split between the ruling TMC and BJP.
Ridding on the promise of implementation of CAA and NRC, Shantanu won the Bongaon LS seat by defeating his aunt and TMC rival. But in 2021, Thakur had been skipping BJP rallies and came on board at the last moment and also travelled with the PM to Bangladesh in the middle of the Bengal polls and visited Orakandi, the birthplace of the founder of the Matua sect Harichand Thakur with Modi.