BJP lines up ‘Save Bengal’ campaign to take on Trinamool Congress

NEW DELHI: The BJP is gearing up to launch a nationwide campaign – ‘Save Bengal’ – to enlist the support of Bengalis across the country and even abroad as it seeks to take on the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the run-up to the 2019 general election.
On Saturday, the BJP’s national joint general secretary Shiv Prakash, West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh and Rajya Sabha member Swapan Dasgupta will launch the campaign in Delhi through Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation, a think tank affiliated to the party, with a discussion on the “present situation of Bengal” followed by the launch of a website, Save Bengal.

The campaign will be launched just days before party chief Amit Shah kicks off the BJP’s ‘rath yatra’ on December 7 from Cooch Behar district.

Under the campaign, the party plans to open Save Bengal chapters in different cities and hold talks and panel discussions on the “deteriorating state of Bengal”, said people aware of the matter. Through this campaign, the party is looking to increase awareness among the educated elite and influencers on the concerns it has been raising with respect to West Bengal, they said.

“Rampant political violence, vanishing investments, unemployment, poor state of educational institutions, unchecked syndicalism and minority appeasement in the state hampering growth, and law and order in the state, and national security, demography and illegal infiltration of migrants are among the topics that will discussed under the campaign in the course of next few days,” said Anirban Ganguly, director, Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation.

“The forum will also be used to explain why the Trinamool Congress government’s decision to rename West Bengal as Bangla is an attempt to undermine the efforts of Syama Prasad Mookerjee, founder of the Jan Sangh, in protecting the interest of Bengalis and his role during the partition of the state,” he said.

Ganguly said that so far there has been no structured discourse on the “deteriorating situation of West Bengal”. “The campaign is an attempt to get a conversation going on how 40 years of communist rule and seven years of TMC have not really brought the desired change but have only plunged the state into further decline,” he said.

The West Bengal chief minister had on Friday ridiculed the BJP’s planned rath yatra, terming it ‘ravan yatra’ and calling for cleansing of areas through which the chariots would pass. At the conclusion of the yatra, the BJP plans to hold a massive rally in Kolkata which is likely to be addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, according to party members.