Much to the BJP leadership’s dismay, the party’s hyped membership drive in West Bengal has fallen significantly short of its ambitious goals, underscoring deeper challenges in building grassroots strength ahead of the 2026 assembly elections. File photo
West Bengal elections: BJP deploys external aides, private agencies to plug grassroots gaps
From poster campaigns to booth-level mentoring, BJP is importing workers from other states to counter TMC’s entrenched cadre network; focus on ground strategy
On a quiet night in Malda’s Sheikhpura village last week, two men described by local residents as “strangers” were intercepted while putting up BJP posters in the area.
When questioned, the two men identified themselves as Vipin Kumar and Yogesh Kumar from Mainpuri in Uttar Pradesh. Residents later handed them over to the police, along with Amar Sahani, a local auto-rickshaw driver from Malda who was accompanying them.
External election aides
The incident brought to the fore Bharatiya Janata Party's broader electoral strategy in West Bengal, which involves deploying workers and leaders from outside the state to plug organisational gaps, as it seeks to take on the Trinamool Congress’s deeply entrenched election machinery in the upcoming 2026 state elections.
While the BJP succeeded in sharply polarising sections of the electorate and expanding its vote share, it concluded that it lagged behind the TMC in maintaining a sustained local presence, leveraging welfare networks and ensuring mobilisation on polling day
Abhijit Mishra, a BJP leader in Malda district, said a private agency had been engaged by the party’s central leadership to put up the posters and indicated that the two men were working on behalf of the party as part of that arrangement.
Under this strategy, the BJP has deployed a substantial number of “election aides” (chunao sahojogi) from outside West Bengal, to strengthen its booth-level network in several districts.
These workers from other states are already active across multiple assembly constituencies, assisting local units with campaign coordination and organisational groundwork, BJP sources said on condition of anonymity.
They said approximately 3,500 external workers have been assigned to the state so far, with the number likely to increase based on requirements.
Boosting grassroots networks
These workers are tasked with working alongside booth-level workers, strengthening the party’s presence in relatively weak pockets, and relaying feedback and strategic inputs to the central leadership.
According to party sources, these external workers have been deployed across regions from North Bengal to districts in the southern beltto bolster the ground campaign.
While BJP state leaders acknowledge the need to deepen local roots, they describe aides from outside Bengal as experienced “organisational helpers” rather than substitutes for local workers, framing the deployment as capacity support to build stronger grassroots networks ahead of the polls.
The presence of these aides is seen as essential to the party’s broader campaign plans, which include large-scale grassroots meetings and targeted campaign such as filing “chargesheets” against the TMC government, all of which require systematic door-to-door mobilisation and structured feedback collection, BJP sources said.
Organisational deficit
The BJP’s strategy reflects a conscious recalibration after falling short of its ambitious targets in the 2021 state polls. Party strategists say the recalibration follows a candid internal assessment of the party’s past electoral performance in the state.
While the BJP succeeded in sharply polarising sections of the electorate and expanding its vote share, it concluded that it lagged behind the TMC in maintaining a sustained local presence, leveraging welfare networks and ensuring mobilisation on polling day.
Party insiders say the leadership has underscored what they described as an “organisational deficit” at the booth level, particularly in semi-urban and rural pockets where the TMC’s entrenched cadre network proved decisive.
Much to the BJP leadership’s dismay, the party’s hyped membership drive in West Bengal has fallen significantly short of its ambitious goals, underscoring deeper challenges in building grassroots strength ahead of the 2026 assembly elections.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah had set an ambitious target of enrolling one crore members across the state. However, the campaign fell well short of that goal, achieving less than half of the projected figure. Moreover, a significant proportion of these were renewals rather than fresh recruits, highlighting difficulties in attracting new, active supporters.
The party’s internal assessments indicate that the number of genuinely active members falls well short of what is required to fill key organisational posts at the mandal, shakti kendra – a typical BJP organisational unit positioned between the mandal and the booth – and booth levels.
Compounding the problem are concerns about so-called “ghost workers”, prompting the party to recently initiate digital audits to remove questionable entries and verify genuine functionaries.
Bottom-up approach
To bridge the organisational gaps it has identified, the party is not relying solely on imported grassroots workers but has also brought in senior leaders from outside the state.
As part of this exercise, around a dozen experienced organisers from Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka have been assigned charge of key regions in West Bengal, including politically sensitive districts such as Howrah, Hooghly and Malda, as well as areas along the strategic Siliguri corridor.
Much to the BJP leadership’s dismay, the party’s hyped membership drive in West Bengal has fallen significantly short of its ambitious goals, underscoring deeper challenges in building grassroots strength ahead of the 2026 assembly elections.
These organisers have been tasked with mentoring local leadership, training booth-level workers, identifying weak pockets and putting in place a more disciplined, data-driven ground network.
That the BJP is placing greater importance on its grassroots organisations can be gauged from its new approach to candidate selection, which now involves structured feedback from mandal-and district-level functionaries rather than relying primarily on decisions taken by the state’s top leadership and central in-charges.
According to party sources, the BJP has directed mandal-and district-level functionaries to recommend three potential candidates from their respective assembly constituencies, based on local assessments, during closed-door meetings.
These recommendations, evaluated on parameters such as winnability, public standing and organisational acceptability, are being compiled and forwarded to the state and central leadership, signalling a more bottom-up approach to ticket distribution.
This decentralised approach is also visible in the party’s unusual exercise to shape its election manifesto through direct public participation.
Sankalp Patra
The BJP has launched a statewide drive to collect citizens’ suggestions for its “Sankalp Patra”, installing around 1,000 drop boxes across districts and setting up QR codes, email addresses and toll-free helplines to gather inputs.
Senior leaders, including state BJP president Samik Bhattacharya and Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari, have participated in these outreach efforts, carrying drop boxes through markets and villages in various districts.
The leadership has said the initiative is intended to ensure that the manifesto reflects local priorities rather than being drafted solely by central committees in New Delhi.
Alongside its organisational push, the BJP has drawn up an expansive and tightly-packed campaign schedule across West Bengal, rolling out around 1,300 small and medium rallies, meetings and public interactions in the run up to the polls.
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