Talking to reporters before leaving the city, Adhikari said, “I am going to Cooch Behar. Nearly 270 workers of our party have taken shelter in our party offices. I will interact with them. It is more important to stand by the victims of post-poll violence than attending meetings.”
Of the 42 parliamentary seats in Bengal, the BJP won 12 while the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) got 29 and the Congress 1. BJP’s seat tally saw a sharp drop from the 2019 general elections, when it had bagged 18 seats.
The meeting was attended by senior BJP state leaders including former Medinipur MP Dilip Ghosh, Union Minister and Bangaon MP Santanu Thakur, state BJP chief and Balurghat MP Sukanta Majumdar, Agnmitra Paul and Locket Chatterjee.
“We have primarily discussed the possible candidates for the Assembly bypolls and will send the names to the central leadership. They will take the final decision. Suvendu Adhikari was not present in the meeting as he is occupied with party activities. He will be informed about the meeting details,” said Chatterjee after the meeting.
Paul said that three names per Assembly constituency have been finalised, which will be sent to central leadership. “Discussions were held mostly on selection of candidates for Assembly bypolls. A detailed discussion on the Lok Sabha poll results in Bengal was reserved for another day,” she said.
Paul said that a four-member committee formed by BJP national president J P Nadda to look into alleged incidents of post-poll violence will arrive in Bengal on Sunday. “The committee will visit Kolkata on Sunday. They will visit our workers at Maheshwari Bhavan in central Kolkata where they have taken shelter. On Monday morning, they will visit Diamond Harbour and Joynagar to meet the affected families. Our priority now is to stand by these people and question the state government why it failed to contain the post-poll violence,” said Paul.
Adhikari’s absence from the meeting comes days after Ghosh and BJP’s Bishnupur MP Saumitra Khan slammed the party’s leadership for lacking “organisational knowledge”. On June 5, Khan had said, “Had it not been for the efforts of the RSS and the central BJP leadership, we would not have won the number of seats which we won. We would have drawn a blank. There are no experienced leaders in the party who have experienced electoral success in their careers. The leaders also lack organisational knowledge.”
Ghosh, who had contested from Durgapur-Bardhaman seat and lost to TMC’s Kirti Azad, had also trained his gun at the state leadership. “The workers could not come out of their homes. I stayed in Medinipur for more than a year to strengthen the booth-level organisation. I visited every village in my constituency and helped implement several Central government initiatives there. People were happy with the work. However, the party decided otherwise. But today that decision (to move him out) has been proven wrong,’ he had said on June 6.