BJP rises in Bengal at cost of Left

The party claims that membership has increased to about 2 million from 3,00,000 six months back

West Bengal unit of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stopped taking new members in the party for a week recently. The saffron party had run out of membership forms, it claimed.

"Last week we did not even have adequate forms, such is the surge in BJP's membersip drive. We had to publish new forms on an emergency basis and distribute them in the districts," said West Bengal BJP president Rahul Sinha. As per the party's claim, the current membership of the the party is now about 2 million from 300,000 six months back.

Claims apart, the rise of Narendra Modi's BJP is quite evident in Mamata Banerjee's West Bengal. Local leadership and gram panchayat members of Left parties defecting to Trinamool Congress has been quite the norm in the last one year.

But, the state is now witnessing a new trend. In the last three weeks, many gram panchayat members of Left parties have joined BJP. In fact, in West Medinipur's Nabagram gram panchayt all 7 CPI-M members defected to BJP. In the last two weeks many district level leaders of the Left have defected to BJP with their followers in districts like Nadia, North 24 Paraganas, Jalpaigudi, Cooch Behar.

Jalpaigudi CPI-M district committe member Tapas Biswas along two more leaders Sukumar Roy and Kamal Roy have switched loyalties to BJP with thousands of supportes.

One of the defected leader Tapas Biswas said, "Left politics has lost relevance now. They cannot even now pose a challenge to Mamata Banerjee's TMC in the state."

"We never thought so many party old timers would shift loyalty to BJP. There is some sort of rush," said Gopal Sarakar, Jalpaigudi destrict secretary of CPI-M.

According to BJP state president Rahul Sinha, about 80% of the workers and local leaders who have joined BJP, have defected from the CPI-M.

In Nadia's Chakdah too hundreds of Left and TMC workers have joined BJP last week. The switchover is not just restricted to rural Bengal. Trinamool Congress MP Derek O'Brien's brother Barry O'Brien along with his wife Densie joined BJP yesterday. Incidentally, Barry was a nominated member of the West Bengal Assembly representing the Anglo-Indian community between 2006-11 during the Left Front regime.

Among other known faces, who have recently joined BJP include stock market professional Siddharta Chatterjee, who is known for his reel role "Topshe" in Satyajit Ray's classic Sonar Kella and footballer Sashti Duley.

The Lok Sabha results showed the emergence of BJP in state as a strong force, as it has trippled its vote share to about 17% this year compared to 2009. Left's vote share, on the other hand, has almost halved at 22% against 43% polled in 2009.

TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee too in a recently held party meeting instructed workers to put up a fight against "new political force" in the state acknowledging the emergence of BJP. And the next electoral battle for Kolkata municipality election could well be between primarily between TMC vs BJP, as the saffron party came second in both the Lok Sabha seats in Kolkata, where Left was a distant third.