Day After Shah's Pep Talk, BJP Leader Dilip Ghosh Meets State Chief, Says Ready for Any Work

PTI, KOLKATA, JAN 1, 2025: A day after attending a meeting with Union Home Minister Amit Shah and West Bengal BJP leaders, the party's former state president, Dilip Ghosh, on Thursday met incumbent Samik Bhattacharya and said he was ready to shoulder any responsibility assigned to him.

Ghosh, who lost in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections after being shifted to Bardhaman-Durgapur from his winning constituency of Medinipur, has largely stayed away from the forefront of the BJP's activities in the state over the past several months. He met Bhattacharya at the party's Salt Lake office here amid speculations that he might play an important role in the saffron brigade's attempt to win West Bengal in the upcoming assembly elections.

On Wednesday, Shah chaired an organisational meeting of the BJP at a hotel in Kolkata with MPs, MLAs, former MPs, and former MLAs of the party. Addressing the media after meeting Bhattacharya, Ghosh said that they discussed preparations for the upcoming assembly elections in the state.

"I don't know what responsibility will be given to me, but I have said I am available 24x7," he said. Ghosh, a former MLA from Kharagpur, stated that he would contest the upcoming assembly polls if fielded by the party. He is likely to address a public meeting at Durgapur on January 13 with Bhattacharya.

Ghosh added that the new entrants to the BJP need to adapt to the party's style of functioning. The former BJP state president said he has no reservations about sharing the stage with Leader of Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, with whom, it is claimed, he does not share a very cordial relationship.

"We will have to cover 294 constituencies across the state, so we also need to address meetings separately to meet the target," he said, pointing out that microphones are not allowed during school board examinations.

Alleging that the Trinamool Congress (TMC) is perturbed by the ongoing Special Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state, Ghosh said, "Otherwise, their top leader (Abhishek Banerjee) would not have raised his pitch over the issue on Wednesday in front of the Election Commission." Banerjee had on Wednesday hit out at Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, saying he failed to address their concerns on the ongoing SIR in West Bengal and was "aggressive" towards them after a party delegation met the poll panel in New Delhi.

EC officials said that the TMC delegation was told that intimidation of any electoral staff by ground-level political representatives and workers would not be tolerated, and that the West Bengal government should immediately release the enhanced honorarium to each BLO.

In a post on X, Ghosh said, "#2026BengalElection is extremely important for Bharat." "In the last election, the struggle we fought established us in the eyes of the people of Bengal as the principal opposition. Today, people of Bengal are ready for change," he wrote.

Under Ghosh's stewardship, the tally of the BJP West Bengal unit rose from just two seats in 2014 to 18 in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections out of 42 constituencies in the state. The party's number of seats also went up from just three in 2016 to 77 in the 2021 assembly polls when Ghosh was the state unit chief.