Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Dec 21: While the BJP claimed it will cause a “Tsunami” in West Bengal in the coming Assembly elections, the party’s one-time election advisor Prashant Kishor said it would be a “struggle” for the saffron party to cross even two digit mark in the 294-member House.
The union home minister Amit Shah during his two-day pre-election visit to the eastern state which ended on Sunday had maintained that the BJP would get at least 200 seats, while the party in-charge of West Bengal national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, who had accompanied Shah, insisted that it would be a “BJP Tsunami” when the state go to the polls by April-May.
Commenting on Shah’s claim, Prashant Kishor, who was the BJP’s election strategist during the 2014 Parliamentary elections and had also helped the party in several state elections, in a tweet message said it would be a struggle for the BJP to cross even double digit mark.
Kishor, who has been roped in the by the West Bengal chief minister Mamata Bannerjee’s Trinamool Congress to plan its campaign strategy this time, also offered to “quit the pace” if he proved wrong in his prediction and the BJP performed better than what he believed.
Without clarifying what he meant by “quitting the space,” Kishor said the so-called hype around the BJP in the state, as is being claimed by the saffron party, was “amplified by a section of the supportive media.”
The BJP hit back for his ambiguity for not clearing what he meant by “quitting the space” but some senior member of his organization I-pac said he hinted at quitting as an election strategist if the BJP win the West Bengal state assembly elections and not just quitting twitter page. “What he meant is quite obvious. He will leave his work if the BJP wins more than 99 seats in Bengal. Those in the BJP, who counter this, should be asked whether they will quit politics if he is proved right,” the executive, who is known to be close to Kishor, said.
In response to Kishor’s message, Vijayvargiya said the “country is certain to lose an election strategist” after the West Bengal polls. “Given the ongoing BJP tsunami in Bengal; once the new government is formed, the country will have to lose an election strategist,” Vijayvargiya quipped on Twitter.
Kishor had earlier helped the BJP, Aam Aadmi Party and the YSR Congress Party win elections. He had also worked with the Congress but could not help them win at the polls.
On Saturday, Shah had welcomed in the BJP fold about a dozen deserters from different parties, mostly from the TMC including the former minister and Trinamool strongman Suvendu Adhikari, setting the tone for a bitter election campaign in Bengal. He gunned for Bannerjee with phrases such as “this is just the beginning” “you will be alone” by the time the polls start..
“This time people want a change to stop infiltration from Bangladesh, to put an end to the political violence in Bengal, to stop the practice of extortion, and to end the dadagiri of bhatija (Mamata’s nephew and TMC MP), Shah said at a rally in Bolpur on Sunday.
This was the first such statement from Kishor, who avoids the media and does not comment on the work done by him and his company, that has been targeted not only by dissidents in the Trinamool but BJP leaders as well.
But the political storm between the BJP and the TMC seems to be hitting the family life of the BJP West Bengal yuva morcha president Saumitra Khan who has threatened to divorce his wife Sujata Mondal Khan because she crossed over to the TMC on Monday as a reaction to Suvendu Adhikari changing sides.
Minutes after she joined the TMC and welcomed into the party in Kolkata, Saumitra, who is also BJP MP from Bishnupur, said her decision was a “big mistake” and she send would “repent” for it. He said he would soon send her the divorce notice if she did not return to the BJP.
At a press meet, Saumitra reminded his wife the “atrocities” the TMC committed against her in the past. “They cut your power supply, there were threats of attack on you… Your job was snatched by Mamata Banerjee or Abhishek Banerjee. At that point of your life, I kept the promise I made to you –– transferred 50% of my salary to your account every month… so that you don’t have to ask for it… Now you have joined hands with those who had harmed you in past.”
He stressed that without BJP, he was no one. And had she not been his wife, nobody would have known her either. “BJP has given me all recognition. I am obliged that you have campaigned for me in the past, but it is also true that I wouldn’t have won the seat without BJP’s name,” he said. “Every family has its fights. But, you have chosen politics over family to feed your high ambitions. You have been trapped and it is your big mistake,” he added.
Sujata, who had actively campaigned for her husband in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls after Saumitra was barred by the court from entering Bankura district, when asked by media persons about her husband’s reaction to her joining the TMC, said, “Family and politics can’t be on same platform, so let’s not talk on those lines. It’s my decision today and who guarantees that Saumitra Khan won’t join me in future?”
She apparently was piqued at the BJP welcoming the TMC turncoats, particularly Suvendu Adhikari, into the party. In a veiled reference to Adhikari she said, “I am not an opportunist like others. I was with the BJP when it was zero and gifted them a difficult seat like Bishnupur. Now, the same party is giving importance to corrupt leaders rejected by the TMC, and those who have fought for the party in difficult times have been sidelined,” she said.