Not invited for PM rally, Dilip Ghosh leaves for Bengaluru
The Statesman | 23 August 2025
Former West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh was not invited for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rally yet again, making it three times in a row.
The PM addressed a rally organised by the party’s state unit at Dum Dum Central Jail ground on Friday evening.
Not getting an invitation for Mr Modi’s rally in Alipurduar on 30 May and then in Durgapur on 18 July, the aggrieved former state BJP president this morning left for Bengaluru to meet the spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.
On an earlier occasion on 18 July, he had also left for Delhi hours before Mr Modi visited Bengal to address his party rally in Durgapur the same day.
Today, while speaking to reporters at the NSCBI airport Mr Ghosh said, “I have a pre-scheduled appointment with Sri Sri Ravi Shankarji in Bengaluru. I am going to meet him and will come back to Kolkata on Saturday.”
The conspicuous exclusion of Mr Ghosh, once the face of the BJP’s aggressive Bengal campaign, from a key political event has again put the spotlight on the party’s alleged simmering factionalism and raised questions over whether the state unit’s recent show of unity was more optics than reality.
“Modiji is coming to address the rally and I will listen to his speeches on my mobile. I can carry out other works as and when the party assigns me,” Mr Ghosh told reporters this morning.
Party insiders admit that despite a recent public show of unity between Mr Ghosh and new state president Samik Bhattacharya, all is not entirely well within the Bengal BJP’s higher echelons.
Earlier, Mr Bhattacharya had pulled off a key political optic by holding a one-on-one meeting with Ghosh at the party’s Salt Lake office, with the two leaders hugging in full public view in an attempt to silence buzz about internal factionalism and possible desertion.
But Mr Ghosh’s exclusion from the PM’s rally now threatens to unravel the tenuous peace, fuelling talks that the former state chief is still not entirely in the loop.
His recent public engagements, including attending a state government programme in Digha alongside his wife, had already raised eyebrows within the party.