Suvendu Adhikari’s Delhi trip again shows BJP cracks

According to several saffron party insiders, Dilip Ghosh is ‘very annoyed’ with Adhikari’s increasing proximity to central leaders like Shah

Dilip Ghosh (left) and Suvendu Adhikari: Telegraph Picture

Arkamoy Datta Majumdar   |   TT  |  Calcutta   |   02.07.21  : Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh said on Thursday that he was unaware of Opposition leader Suvendu Adhikari’s trip to Delhi and what had transpired at his meetings with Union ministers Amit Shah and Harsh Vardhan.

Ghosh’s comment is seen as yet another sign of the growing rift between two camps in the Bengal BJP, one led by the state president and the other by Adhikari.

Adhikari reached Delhi on Wednesday night and met Union home minister Shah, Union health minister Vardhan, solicitor-general Tushar Mehta and BJP MP Dinesh Trivedi on Thursday. Like Adhikari, Trivedi had also left the Trinamul Congress and joined the BJP ahead of the Assembly polls.

In the first week of June, Adhikari had visited Delhi to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Shah, BJP national president J.P. Nadda. Then also, Ghosh had issued a statement saying he was unaware of the trip and its reasons.

Asked about the Opposition leader’s latest Delhi trip, Ghosh on Thursday said: “It is not known to me.”

“He is the leader of the Opposition…. He might have some consultation with the (Union) government. The (Assembly) session is about to begin, so he might be speaking on these issues. I don’t even know what he could have talked about,” added the Midnapore MP. “We will talk later.”

Several BJP insiders told this newspaper that Ghosh was “very annoyed” with Adhikari’s increasing proximity to central leaders like Shah. They said while it was not unnatural of a non-BJP-ruled state’s leader of the Opposition (from the BJP) to meet national leaders, it was “untoward” that the state president of the party was kept in the dark about such trips, twice in a matter of weeks.

“In the BJP scheme of things, the state president enjoys supreme authority in the state unit. Suvendu can, of course, go to Delhi and do these things. What is unpalatable is that Dilipda is being kept in the dark about these activities,” said a state BJP office-bearer.

After the Delhi trip in early June, Adhikari had said he had informed the state BJP general-secretary, Amitava Chakraborty, about the visit. Chakraborty, an old RSS hand like Ghosh, had been handpicked before the Assembly elections to replace the state president’s closest friend Subrata Chatterjee.

Adhikari declined comment when told about Ghosh’s claim that he was unaware of the former’s visit to Delhi.