Amid Centre-Bengal face-off, Dilip walks state tightrope

Kolkata: Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh and chief minister Mamata Banerjee have one thing in common — both have been facing a high-handed Centre: Banerjee at the administrative level and Ghosh at the party level. This is one reason why Ghosh didn’t join the debate on the Centre’s “administrative action” against the top state official.
“This is an administrative decision.We are not always kept in the loop on organizational decisions even,” a senior Bengal BJP leader said, giving vent to frustration over party brass’ “domineering role”.
State BJP leaders didn’t like the way party seniors Ghosh and Mukul Roy were “elbowed out” of the decision-making process during assembly polls, right from candidate selection to finetuning organizational nitty gritty. There is a contrary view as well that puts the debacle blame on a coterie, of which Ghosh was a part.
The perception gap between BJP brass and state-level leadership is growing because the former hasn’t yet undertaken a formal stocktaking of Bengal polls.
BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, the Bengal minder, is busy holding virtual meetings with party office-bearers in Punjab, Chandigarh, Bihar and Uttarakhand over the post-poll situation in Bengal. Party’s think tank and prospective chief ministerial candidate Swapan Dasgupta, who lost the polls from Tarakeswar, is back to the Rajya Sabha while Union junior minister Babul Supriyo is back to Asansol, his parliamentary constituency.
The central BJP mandarins’ apparent withdrawal, followed by the pandemic and cyclone, has bared BJP’s inherent organizational gaps that the party wanted to make up with ‘dal badlus’. Vast stretches of South 24 Parganas, for instance, remain unattended while state BJP leaders are reaching pockets elsewhere.
BJP president J P Nadda visited Kolkata days after election results in May and promised to take the battle to a “conclusive end”. Soon after, a Union home ministry team visited Bengal followed by a host of national commission teams reaching out to violence-hit areas. But there was hardly any back-up from state BJP. “Leaders met the members in Kolkata but had no clue when and where these teams were visiting,” said a BJP organizer from Diamond Harbour.
A host of Trinamool Congress-turned-BJP leaders such as Sabyasachi Dutta and Rajib Banerjee have gone into virtual mode. Sovan Chatterjee has left BJP while Sonali Guha and Subhrangshu Roy have started tracing their way back to Trinamool.
The sudden surge in the organization is already heading for the ebb, with a handful of BJP leaders facing the anger and frustration of party ranks. “Many party workers are being asked to pay a hefty sum for coming back home,” alleged Bengal BJP general secretary Sayantan Basu.
Ghosh had been to trouble-torn villages in East and West Midnapore. But such efforts were far short of BJP workers’ expectations. For Ghosh, it is back to square one. He can’t pass on the electoral defeat to somebody else and he can’t see eye to eye with BJP brass either.