The Durga Puja organised by the Bengal unit of the BJP this year remained a lacklustre event as the top tier of the state leadership largely stayed away from the final edition of the festival held by the party.

While state BJP president Sukanta Majumdar visited the Puja once on the day of the inauguration on Saturday, leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari and the party’s national vice-president Dilip Ghosh gave the event a miss.

According to several sources in the saffron camp, the Puja, which was started in 2020 to send out a message of unity in the Bengal BJP, proved to be yet another example of how disjointed the main Opposition party in the state remained.

“Bengal BJP is currently known by three faces, Sukantada, Suvenduda, and Dilipda. When none of them invests time or effort in such a mega event, it is evident that all isn’t well,” said a source.

In 2020, in the first edition of the Puja — virtually inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi — Ghosh was the state party president.

The Puja was conceived by the then BJP minder for the state, Kailash Vijayvargiya, and Ghosh publicly opposed the idea. However, that didn’t stop Ghosh from participating in the event.

By the next year’s Puja, Ghosh had been replaced by Majumdar, yet the newly appointed national vice-president of the party made it a point to visit the Puja at the EZCC in Salt Lake. Adhikari was not a BJP member when the Puja was first organised by the BJP.

However, in 2021, he was already a BJP MLA and the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly. The Nandigram MLA not only participated in the Puja but was also seen playing dhaak, along with Majumdar.This time, a number of MPs and MLAs also gave the Puja a miss.

Among them, the most conspicuous absence was that of Hooghly MP Locket Chatterjee.

Given her post as a general secretary of the state BJP, she was expected to be highly engaged in the Puja. Sources close to Chatterjee said she was unhappy with the fact that two other general secretaries were getting more importance in the decision-making process.

“We have been told to organise post-Puja events at all mandals of the party to rebuild the organisation. But if our leaders can’t declare a truce among themselves even during the festivities, how do they expect unity at the grassroots?” asked a state BJP office-bearer.

A mandal is the smallest organisational unit of the BJP. The BJP had already declared that the party would no longer hold Durga Puja after this year. Asked about his absence from Puja, Dilip Ghosh said he had been touring other districts on Friday and Saturday. On Sunday, he left Calcutta for Uttarakhand and will come back to the city on October 9. Suvendu Adhikari did not take calls from this newspaper.

While the absence of the top leaders from the Puja triggered a controversy, a more conservative section of the BJP expressed its discontent with a “non-Brahmin, woman” priest performing the Puja rites this time.

Sulata Mondal, a former student of Majumdar, was chosen to perform the rituals and, according to the section, she didn’t do justice to the job. Several BJP sources, including one MP and a district president, alleged on the condition of anonymity that Mondal had ill-performed the rituals and mispronounced Sanskrit chants.

“We thrive on Hindutva ideology. If we are the ones disrespecting a Hindu religious occasion, how do we project ourselves as its protectors?” asked the MP.