'People's lack of faith on BJP MPs led to poor show'

KOLKATA: The initial report prepared by the BJP regarding its poll debacle in the state cited that lack of faith on the BJP Members of Parliament (MPs), who fought the state Assembly polls, among local people due to their non-availability led to the disaster, sources revealed on Tuesday.

To avoid the blame game, the Central leadership has asked the MPs not to trade charges against each other as that would send a wrong message to the people and try to find out the real cause behind the disaster.

Party MPs Babul Supriyo and Locket Chatterjee, who fought the election from Tollygunge and Chinsurah respectively lost to their TMC rivals while Nisith Pramanik and Jagannath Sarkar, who contested from Dinhata and Shantipur respectively, were elected with narrow margins. Out of the seven Assembly segments that fall under Kharagpur Parliamentary seat from where Dilip Ghosh, BJP state president, was elected in 2019 Lok Sabha election, the party had been able to win only the Kharagpur Sadar Assembly seat. This has caused much embarrassment for Ghosh as Narendra Modi had addressed a rally there, besides separate meetings and roadshows by Amit Shah and JP Nadda. In Hooghly, BJP bagged only four seats out of 18. Locket Chatterjee lost in Chinsurah by 20,000 votes. In the Hooghly Lok Sabha seat, BJP candidates have been defeated in all the Assembly segments. In Raigunj, from where Debashree Chowdhury was elected in 2019 Lok Sabha polls, BJP lost in five out of seven seats. Out of seven seats in Burdwan-Durgapur Lok Sabha seat, BJP got the Durgapur West seat while TMC bagged the remaining six seats. SS Ahluwallia became the MP from the seat in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Babul Supriyo was defeated by TMC's Aroop Biswas by over 50,000 votes from Tollygunge. But party nominees did not do well in the Assembly segments that fall under the Asansol LS seat. Of the nine seats in Burdwan West, BJP got only three seats.