BJP men demand removal of Kailash Vijayvargiya & Amitava Chakraborty

kolkata: The infighting in BJP continues unabated with party workers demonstrating outside the state headquarters, demanding removal of Kailash Vijayvargiya and Amitava Chakraborty on Thursday afternoon.

This has happened at time when BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar requested aggrieved party leaders to take up the matter with the state leaders and not to talk to the press.

Party leaders and workers from several districts, including Hooghly, Howrah and North 24-Parganas gathered outside the state BJP headquarters on Muralidhar Sen Lane and shouted slogans demanding removal of Kailash Vijayvargiya and Amitava Chakraborty, state organising secretary.

The leaders, who had protested, held the duo responsible for the poll debacle of the party. They said Subrata Chatterjee, who was the state secretary, was removed shortly before 2021 Assembly elections.

Also, the party gave more importance to those who had joined BJP from Trinamool Congress.

This had hit the morale of the original BJP rank and file.

The new entrants had failed to put up a good show and the party only got 77 seats in the Assembly polls. The leaders said after 2021 Assembly election, BJP's performance had remain poor in all the subsequent elections and by-elections.

In the civic elections, the party had failed to get control over a single Municipality.

In the recently-held by-election, party nominee's deposit had been forfeited in Ballygunge Assembly seat.

The leaders alleged that they had given letters to the Central and state leadership without receiving replies from them. Dilip Ghosh, national vice-president, admitted that grievances among a section of leaders are fast increasing.

This is due to the party's poor show in the elections. It was learnt that the central leadership would talk to the state leaders next week to take a stock of the situation.

Amit Shah and JP Nadda, party's national president, have expressed their

displeasure over the party's poll debacle in Asansol Lok Sabha seat.

Earlier, BJP national secretary Anupam Hazra on Monday asked the party's infighting-affected Bengal unit to set its house in order by identifying its lacunas or else its existence would be in crisis in the state.

Hazra, who had lashed out at the state unit following the party's drubbing in the by-elections to Asansol Lok Sabha constituency and Ballygunge Assembly seat on Saturday, said instead of pretending "everything is alright", the leadership should take steps to solve the issues.

The internal bickering within the BJP's state unit came to the fore after the TMC's Asansol candidate, Bollywood actor Shatrughan Sinha, steamrolled the BJP's Agnimitra Paul by over 3,00,000 votes.