BJP hits back after Mamata’s rally, to hold public meetings in all 42 Bengal Lok Sabha seats by Feb 8

Snigdhendu Bhattacharya, HT, Kolkata : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has decided to counter the Mamata Banerjee’s opposition unity show in Kolkata with a series of public meetings by the party’s national leaders in all 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state by February 8, the party’s state leadership said on Saturday evening.

“The series of rallies will start with (BJP president) Amit Shah’s five rallies between January 22 and 24. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be addressing three rallies, on January 28, 31 and February 8. In between, other national level leaders including Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari and Yogi Adityanath will be addressing rallies,” said BJP national secretary Rahul Sinha.

In Bengal, there will be a ban on use of loudspeakers from February 9 to March 13 due to the state board exams.

Party’s state unit chief Dilip Ghosh said that all district units have been asked to launch intense campaign to counter the allegations made by various opposition party leaders from the rally ground.

“The party’s youth wing will undertake bike rallies and cycle rallies to campaign for the meetings in every Lok Sabha constituency. Our message is very clear – all corrupt and discredited leaders have united against Modi because the Prime Minister has robbed them off their sleep,” Ghosh said.

BJP has also decided to campaign to ”expose” Congress’ ”fake opposition to Trinamool Congress’ dictatorial regime” in a bid to ensure it gets lion’s share of anti-Trinamool votes.

“We are also working on engineering a defection among aggrieved TMC leaders. One sitting TMC MP (Saumitra Khan) has already joined us. We are trying our best to present a few more TMC leaders on our dais in these meetings,” said a state committee member who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Party president Shah has tasked the state unit with winning 22 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats. Presently the party has only two, the highest it ever had in the state.

“The battle between Trinamool and BJP in Bengal is about setting the proper narrative. While Trinamool wants to portray this election as the one to throw out the party and Prime Minister, BJP plans to utilise the election to script the beginning of the end of the Mamata Banerjee regime in Bengal,” said political analyst Biswanath Chakraborty, a professor of political science of Rabindra Bharati University.