KOLKATA: A major reshuffle is likely to take place in BJP’s West Bengal unit to pave the way for the turncoats who can turn the table.
The party high command directed the state unit to ensure berths in the hierarchy for those who can ensure the saffron camp’s electoral dividend in the 2021 Assembly elections and derail TMC-led Mamata Banerjee’s government.
The BJP is expecting a largescale exodus from the TMC within a month as several leaders and elected representatives of the ruling party expressed their unhappiness publicly in the recent past.
Kailash Vijayvargiya, the observer for West Bengal, who attended an organisational meeting held by one of the five national leaders on Wednesday, said many elected representatives of the ruling party were in touch with the BJP. "They are feeling uncomfortable in the TMC. If these leaders join the BJP, we will have to ensure an atmosphere in which they will feel comfortable," said Vijayvargiya.
BJP sources said if a TMC MLA joins the BJP, his followers will also travel along the same path. "We will not only have to give the MLA a berth in district level hierarchy, but also his followers who will have to be inducted in lower-rung committee. Similarly, if a heavyweight minister of the ruling party changes his political allegiance towards our party, we will have to think of restructuring the state committee," said a BJP leader.
He clearly pointed out that there was a clear instruction from the party’s national leadership that those turncoats who have their own mass base would have to be welcomed in the party by offering them berths in the hierarchy.
The five national leaders of the party, including Sunil Deodhar, who is believed to have scripted BJP’s victory in Tripura, made it clear on Thursday that the party would not tolerate any internal conflict and turncoats would have to be received with honour.
The national leaders have been assigned to gauge the party’s ground-level mass base and they will submit a report to the Union Home Minister Amit Shah.