Amit Shah told BJP functionaries in Bengal that he would visit the state at least once a month between April and October, and from the festival season onwards, he would spend a week here to fulfil the objective of taking power from Mamata Banerjee.

The Union home minister held a slew of meetings with party leaders, stretching close to midnight, after his public meeting at Shahid Minar in Calcutta on Sunday afternoon.

Shah, alongside BJP national president J.P. Nadda and general-secretary (organisation) B.L. Santosh, asked his party’s state unit not to worry.

“He (Shah) said that from April, he would start coming to Bengal at least once a month. From October, he said, those monthly visits would last for at least a week,” said a participant in one of the meetings.

Shah conducted multiple rounds of meetings — first with the party MPs from Bengal, then with the presidents of the 38 organisational districts, observers and MLAs and finally with the senior-most leaders in Bengal, including general secretaries, past presidents and central observers — at a city hotel after offering prayers at the Kalighat temple in the afternoon.

The last meeting ended at around 11.40pm, after which Shah left for Delhi.

A senior BJP leader said no senior party leader ever spent so much time with the Bengal unit and the effort was enough to energise the party. “At the extended meeting, he spoke less and allowed the leaders to share their views,” said a source.

Several BJP leaders said Shah repeatedly told the functionaries that he was with the Bengal unit, shoulder to shoulder, and he was fully aware of the realities in Bengal.

“In an attempt to convince the functionaries about the seriousness the party attached to its Mission Bengal, he said that Naddaji came to Bengal from Himachal although it was his son’s wedding today,” said a source.

The attempt to convince the seriousness of the party’s central unit about Bengal assumed importance as some functionaries told Shah that a section in the party believed that there was a secret deal between the party’s top brass and Mamata Banerjee, referring to his meeting with the chief minister in Bhubaneshwar and her earlier meeting with Narendra Modi when he visited Calcutta in January.

“He clarified that as the Union home minister, it was his responsibility to meet chief ministers and so was the case for the Prime Minister,” said a source.

When some leaders raised concerns over how partisan the police administration in Bengal was and how much it was affecting the party, he said he was unwilling to accept such excuses.

A state unit functionary said some sections complained to Shah against the media in Bengal, accused it of being biased against the BJP, and asked for intervention to “exercise some control”. “He said ‘aisa nahi hota (this does not happen)’’’, the state leader said.

Ayodhya, Kashmir

At the public meeting at Shahid Minar, Shah harped on the BJP’s pet themes like Kashmir and Ayodhya but desisted from commenting on the communal riots in northeast Delhi under his watch.

The Bengal BJP had organised the meeting to felicitate him for getting the citizenship act amended in Parliament.

The Union home minister said the BJP would win the next year’s Assembly polls with a two-third majority and the next chief minister would be a bhumiputra (son of the soil) who had risen from the ground, not a shahzada.

Shah blamed the Opposition, including Mamata, for allegedly misleading people on the Modi government's citizenship matrix.

“Muslim brothers and sisters of the state need not worry, nobody is going to lose citizenship. This is not to take but to give citizenship,” said Shah.

Shah evoked the “wishes” of Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, B.R. Ambedkar and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad as justification for the CAA.

“As the Citizenship Amendment Bill was being passed, she was orchestrating riots here,” he added.

Beneath the veneer of allaying fears, however, Shah kept falling back on themes such as the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya in his address that virtually launched the BJP’s campaign for the Bengal Assembly polls.

“Friends, in Ayodhya, where Lord Sri Ram was born, in order to build a grand temple there, we had been fighting for 500 years,” said the former BJP chief.

While mentioning Ram Mandir, Shah’s voice broke and he paused for 20 seconds to absorb the cheers from the audience.

“The people of Bengal blessed us, Modiji got 300 seats in the general election, Modiji now announced the trust for building the temple,” he added.

After a 21-second pause, during which sections of the audience shouted “Jai Shri Ram”, Shah said: “Say with me, ‘Jai Shri Ram, Jai Jai Shri Ram’.”

The home minister also kept asking the audience whether his government had done the right thing by abolishing Kashmir’s special provisions under Article 370 of the Constitution. He attacked Mamata for opposing the move.

Trinamul’s de facto Number Two Abhishek Banerjee tweeted later: “Rather than coming and preaching #Bengal @AmitShah you should have explained and apologised for failing to save more than 50 innocent lives in #DelhiViolence right under your nose. Mr Shah, Bengal is better off without bigotry and hatred that BJP is trying to spread.”