After Bihar, Union Home Minister and BJP leader Amit Shah will on Tuesday will (virtually) begin the campaign for West Bengal Assembly elections due in April 2021. He is going to be speaking on multiple social media platforms at 11 am that specialize in Bengal. All top BJP Bengal leaders will attend – virtually.
“The rally will begin a political change during this state,” Bengal’s BJP chief Dilip Ghosh said on Monday while announcing the mega online event. “It may be a first for us and our party will set a record within the number of individuals attending.”
In Bihar, the BJP leaders have claimed 70,000 LED TV sets were put up across the state for the event and 43 lakh people “attended”, because it were. Dilip Ghosh didn’t say what percentage LED screens the Bengal unit would be fixing .
“What BJP can afford, we cannot,” West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said when asked if she planned an identical virtual rally on July 21, the day Trinamool holds its annual mega rally to watch “Martyrs’ Day”.
Ms Banerjee was presumably not aware during her 4 pm news briefing on Monday that Mr Shah’s second virtual rally was planned to be held in her state subsequent day. That announcement was made at the BJP office a brief while later.
Earlier in May, Mr Shah wrote to Mamata Banerjee accusing her of not helping migrants return to Bengal. Some contents were leaked to the media before Ms Banerjee had time to reply .
In a subsequent meeting of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with chief ministers where Mr Shah was present, Ms Banerjee attacked him publicly for “playing politics”. She was also angry that his Ministry sent central teams to Bengal first and only later informed her of their arrival.
With Tuesday’s virtual rally, poll politics in Bengal between the rival political parties should hit a replacement peak. The stakes are high. Last May, BJP sprung surprise leads to the Lok Sabha polls, sweeping 18 of 42 seats. Trinamool did make a recovery in bypolls a couple of months later, but BJP has continuously attacked Mamata Banerjee for allegedly mismanaging the COVID-19 crisis and are bound to intensify the rhetoric.
