KOLKATA: Eyeing the Bihari vote bank in West Bengal, Nitin Nabin, newly appointed national president of the BJP, is all set to pay his maiden visit to the State for two days from Tuesday.
He will attend the party’s organisational meetings in Durgapur and Asansol, heartlands of Hindi-speaking voters, many with roots to adjacent Jharkhand and Bihar, respectively.
Sources said that he will visit the Kalam Mela in Durgapur and then attend a meeting organised by the saffron camp to get the political pulse from the party workers, hardly three months ahead of the assembly polls in Bengal.
The meeting is scheduled to be held in a private hotel in the industrial town Durgapur. On January 28, he will offer prayer at the Bhiringi Kali temple in the town and then attend two meetings in Durgapur and adjoining Asansol, sources said, requesting anonymity.
Political observers felt that Nabin’s two-day-long visit to Durgapur and Asansol was significant in terms of electoral benefits of the BJP in the upcoming assembly polls in the State.
Both Kirti Azad and Shatrughan Sinha, two sitting Trinamool Congress MPs from Bardhaman, Durgapur and Asansol constituencies, are natives of Bihar.
To woo Hindi voters, the ruling party leadership in Bengal had fielded Azad and Sinha in two Lok Sabha constituencies in the last parliamentary polls in 2024.
Areas in West Burdwan district were once a BJP stronghold, and the party hopes that Nabin’s visit would galvanise the enthusiasm among the large numbers of Bihari voters who live there.
The BJP had bagged both seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, with S.S. Ahluwalia winning from Burdwan-Durgapur and Babul Supriyo — now with Trinamool — from Asansol.
The Bengal BJP is gearing for a busy January-end with Nitin Nabin set for his maiden visit to the state as party national president, followed by his political mentor and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Nabin, a native of Bihar, will spend January 27 and 28 in Durgapur and Asansol, which have sizeable populations of non-Bengali voters, many with their roots in Bihar.
“So, there is scope for a revival for the BJP. The party believes that with proper concentration on this particular zone, it can win at least six Assembly seats from the Durgapur and Asansol areas,” a senior BJP leader said.
The Bengal BJP unit is eager to intensify its election campaigns against the Trinamool Congress with Nabin’s visit to the state.
The Union Home Minister Amit Shah is also scheduled to visit the state by the end of this week, though his itinerary has not yet been finalised by the BJP central leadership so far.
He is likely to hold one meeting in any of the North Bengal districts and another in the South Bengal districts, according to party sources.
