After a long time, Dilip Ghosh, the former state president of the BJP and former MP, addressed the media from the BJP office in Salt Lake, Thursday.
Many in the BJP could not recall the last time when Ghosh had addressed the media from the party office.
Union home minister Amit Shah’s visit to Calcutta early this week worked as an ice-breaker. Dilip was included in the circle of the state BJP’s top brass, the state president Samik Bhattacharya, the leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari and the former state president Sukanta Mazumdar, that held a closed-door meeting with Shah.
BJP insiders said Shah instructed the state BJP leadership to involve Ghosh, who has been sulking in the side lines of the BJP’s politics for several months, in the political activities of the party.
Shah’s message to the Bengal BJP leadership was to present a united face before the state electorate with the old and new leaders working in tandem.
Sources in the BJP said the trio of Adhikari-Bhattacharya-Mazumdar will be the mainstay of the party’s poll strategy in Bengal.
“Undoubtedly, Dilip da is a loose cannon. The party’s central leadership does not want to keep him loose. It was felt that he could be utilised in an effective manner. Being a senior and seasoned campaigner keeping it out of the loop was creating difficulties. Right now it does not appear that he will have any say in the decision making process,” said a BJP insider.
The distance between Ghosh and the state BJP leaders had been widening for quite some time. And, all of it was linked to the national BJP’s ambition to electorally conquer Bengal and the party’s generals, the state leaders, failing to deliver.
Ghosh was one of those generals. Though he also happened to be the state president under whose baton the BJP grew from just two MPs in 2014 to 18 five years later. Yet, Ghosh was booted out after the 2021 Assembly polls which the BJP lost. Without Ghosh, BJP fared even worse in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Before the news conference, Ghosh held a meeting with the state president Samik Bhattacharya. Both of them will attend a public meeting in Durgapur on January 13.
“I will do what the party tells me. If I am asked to contest polls I will,” Ghosh said later in the news conference.
The acrimony between Ghosh, who led the Bengal BJP to its electoral zenith till date in the state, and the leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari, who was expected to steer the party to form the government five years ago is no secret.
One of the reasons behind the sour ties between the two popular leaders is that their roots lie in the same part of Bengal, Ghosh in West Midnapore and Adhikari in East Midnapore.
Even when the Left Front was in power and Midnapore was undivided, the Adhikari clan led, by the patriarch Sisir, held sway over a huge part of the district.
As the Left’s power weaned, the Adhikaris expanded their clout to both the Midnapores. Ghosh too entered the state Assembly in 2016 from Kharagpur in West Midnapore. He went to the Lok Sabha from Medinipur constituency in the same district three years later.
It is difficult for any party when two power centres emerge and if they happen to be in each other’s backyard, the problems compound.
A section of the BJP leaders say, Ghosh believes he was sent packing from Kharagpur to Burdwan-Durgapur Lok Sabha constituency during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls to appease the Adhikari scion.
On Thursday too Ghosh made it clear that he wanted to contest from Kharagpur and the decision to send him elsewhere (in the last Lok Sabha polls) proved costly for the party.
The BJP had lost both the Lok Sabha seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
“We are busy strategising for the Assembly polls. Once the SIR (Special Intensive Revision) process is over roles and responsibilities will be conveyed to each leader. Dilip da will also have a role to play,” said a senior Bengal BJP leader.