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Bengal

Internal strife resurfaces in BJP as Dilip Ghosh alleges ‘conspiracy & backbiting’

Kolkata: Internal conflicts within the BJP resurfaced again as senior party leader Dilip Ghosh suggested on Wednesday that “conspiracy and backbiting” played a role in his recent electoral defeat.

He also emphasised the need to investigate why the BJP failed to sustain its growth momentum in Bengal following the 2021 Assembly elections.

BJP bagged 18 Lok Sabha seats in Bengal in the 2019 polls, but its tally went down to 12 this time.

Speaking to reporters, Ghosh said he fought from the Bardhaman-Durgapur seat with all sincerity but could not get success.

Presumably pointing fingers at Opposition leader Suvendu Adhikari, who led the state BJP along with the party president Sukanta Majumder, Ghosh said: “...conspiracies and backbiting are part of politics. I take them that way. Despite that, I worked hard enough, but success did not come. In politics, everyone walks around with a stick to poke you.”

He continued: “The party was moving at a faster pace till 2021, which somehow got stuck after that. We could not move at the same pace in which we were moving till 2021. We had hoped a lot this year, but could not perform. There must be some gap. We must examine that. Everything should be discussed.”

Despite securing 77 Assembly seats in Bengal in 2021, the BJP failed to increase its vote share in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

The BJP’s vote share was approximately 38 per cent in 2019 and remained almost the same this time. Dilip Ghosh pointed out that “the organisational strength of the party did not improve in the past 3-4 years.”

Incidentally, in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP secured 18 seats from Bengal, whereas in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the party managed to clinch only 12 seats.

This time Ghosh contested from Burdwan-Durgapur and lost to Trinamool Congress’ Kirti Azad.

Ghosh had fought from the Midnapore seat in 2019 and won. This time, he was moved to an unknown turf. There were speculations that Adhikari was instrumental in it. BJP state president Sukanta Majumder during a television interview said that he could not take all the decisions on his own but he would not shrug off responsibilities for the party’s poor show. It was not, however, clear who he was hinting at.

He also said that they would discuss within the party and try to find out the causes of the poor show.

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