BJP’s oldest Kolkata office to get facelift, house social media wing
Times of India | 8 March 2025
12 Kolkata: BJP's oldest party office in Kolkata which has been losing its sheen — and importance — to its swankier cousins in Hastings and now Salt Lake, is now getting a facelift. Number 6, Murlidhar Sen Lane, home to BJP's Bengal unit for almost five decades, will now also house the party's youngest additions — its social media and IT wings and a larger call centre.
The building, whose political history goes back to the times of the Great Calcutta Killings, is now only used by the party's north Kolkata unit and a small call call centre.
In 1946, Syama Prasad Mookerjee took the office on rent and started working from there. After the Bharatiya Jan Sangh was founded in 1951, 6, Murlidhar Sen Lane housed its Kolkata office. When BJP came to being in 1980, the office accommodated both BJP and Jan Sangh members. Some BJP office-bearers also started living in the building. With time, more rooms were allotted to whole timers.
"While both Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani came here, PM Narendra Modi also visited the office in 2001," said Sayantan Basu, former BJP general secretary.
While the office, located at the heart of central Kolkata, was easier for the workers in Kolkata and Howrah to commute, the office gradually became inadequate as the party grew in Bengal. A small office was taken at Kankurgachi in 2014. In 2016, an election office was opened at Hastings. Murlidhar Sen Lane still served as the main office during the 2019 LS polls and the 2021 state assembly polls. After 2021 assembly polls, however, BJP headquarters in the state was shifted to Salt Lake.
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