As ‘Nabanna Chalo’ backfires in Bengal, BJP censures cadres for ‘lack of grit’

After the unsuccessful attempt to ‘gherao’ the state secretariat Nabanna on Thursday (October 8), BJP strongman and Barrackpore MP Arjun Singh is said to have reprimanded party workers for not showing enough grit to face police batons.

“I thank you all for coming here. But I am saddened to see you flee when the police came chasing,” Singh apparently told the BJP workers, insisting they needed to demonstrate more courage to dislodge the Mamata Banerjee government.

“Jader opor Trinamool sarkar manoshik ottachar korche, sharirik ottachar korche tara ki amader kkhoma korbe je amra andolan korte ese paliye jachhi… kano palaben? (Will they, on whom the TMC is inflicting mental and physical torture, forgive us for running away from protest….Why will you flee?),” a BJP worker quoted Singh as saying after the meeting.

The jibe, many in the BJP say, was not only directed at the workers, but also at some leaders, particularly state BJP president Dilip Gosh, who had abandoned the much-hyped protest march, the moment the police blocked it.

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Arjun Singh along with BJP national secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, MP Locket Chatterjee and a few others were seen, unlike the others, staging a sit-in-demonstration when the police prevented them from marching towards the secretariat.

Singh’s name figured in the FIR the police filed on Friday (October 9) against seven BJP leaders for Thursday’s unlawful assembly and violation of laws. The other leaders are Vijayvargiya, Locket Chatterjee, party’s national vice-president Mukul Roy, another MP Rakesh Sinha and two state-level leaders Bharati Ghosh and Jayprakash Majumdar.

The BJP’s ‘Nabanna Chalo’ agitation on seven-point issues ranging from alleged rise of political violence to lack of jobs to corruption of Mamata Banerjee’s government was planned as a major show of strength by the saffron brigade that has been of late pushed on the back foot.

A series of desertions that it has suffered in the past few months, leadership tussles and differences among the leaders over the party’s likely approach to the forthcoming assembly elections, dented the BJP’s credibility of being a credible challenger to the ruling Trinamool Congress.

None other than Mukul Roy himself recently expressed doubt about the strength of the party’s grass-root organisation to slug it out with the TMC during the assembly elections some six months later, according to BJP insiders.

Compounding the party’s worry, the TMC already launched a state-wide protest against the alleged gang-rape of a Dalit girl at Hathras in the BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh and the three contentious legislations the central government has introduced to “reform” the farm sector.

“The march was an attempt to demonstrate its strength as a party capable of taking on the Mamata government, a posturing necessary to convince the fence sitters that it has enough firepower to give them protection against the TMC atrocities,” said Kolkata-based political commentator Ranjan Sengupta.

On the D-Day, however, the agitation failed to match the hype the BJP leaders had created. The rally not only failed to reach anywhere near the secretariat, even the turnout was nothing near its original target of 2 lakh.

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State BJYM chief Saumitra Khan claimed over 45,000 turned up at the protest march, alleging the TMC used the government machinery to prevent thousands of others from various districts to reach the city.

In private, many BJP leaders admit that the agitation failed to make the desired impact as it was easily tamed by the police without having to arrest or use force on senior leaders, denying the party any powerful image of the protest.

That explains Singh’s reprimanding of workers for not displaying enough bravado. After all, in the rough turf of Bengal politics only the toughs get going.