Kolkata: With apprehensions floating among a section of Bengal BJP leaders that the implementation of SIR can backfire on the saffron camp, trouble-torn state BJP hopes to draw strength from the rallies by PM Modi or Union Home minister Amit Shah ahead of 2026 Assembly elections in the state.
Shah is expected to hold an organisational meeting in the state either at the end of November or early December, sources said.7 The BJP leaders in Bengal are hoping that Shah’s visit would help recharge the state unit. A party insider said that Shah, during the meet, may issue some guidelines and chalk out strategies keeping in mind the 2026 polls. State leaders are eyeing Shah’s “vocal tonic” to “revitalize” the state BJP. Shah’s strategy would be to make their state unit, battling organisational crisis, more focused.
The ruling Trinamool Congress often refers to Modi and Shah as “migratory birds” visiting the state only during elections, and also claimed that no BJP leaders from outside Bengal would ever be able to lift the state BJP from its internal crisis.
Meanwhile, the state BJP had pinned its hope on the SIR to gain political mileage ahead of the next Assembly elections in Bengal, but the saffron party may face the backlash as a section of Matuas and Rajbanshi communities have openly criticized it, saying that the SIR may strip their voting rights by removing their names from the electoral rolls. Many leaders from the saffron camp who had advocated for the SIR, NRC were seeing “impending danger” for the BJP as the Matuas and Rajbangshi people were raising questions about the BJP.
An internal conflict over SIR has recently come to the fore as many BJP leaders quit the party’s WhatsApp group. A camp organised by the party in Nadia to reassure the Hindus, who crossed over from Bangladesh to India over the decades, was recently vandalised, allegedly by a faction within the local unit of the party.
BJP MLA Ashim Sarkar earlier warned that Matuas, a Hindu lower-caste community with roots in Bangladesh, “would not spare the BJP” if the saffron party did not give adequate attention to granting citizenship to the people belonging to them.