The growing unease in the West Bengal Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over party’s electoral debacle in the recently concluded civic polls has triggered a blame game and war of words among the senior leaders of the party.
On Saturday, the party organised “ Chintan Baithak” where calls for introspection of the party’s electoral debacle grew louder. In the elections to 108 civic bodies the BJP could not even win a single municipality while the Trinamool Congress swept 102 municipalities. In terms of vote percentage, the Left parties marginally scored better votes than the BJP and even won a civic body.
BJP State general secretary and Hooghly Lok Sabha MP Locket Chatterjee was among those who was most vocal at the “ Chintan Baithak”. Ms. Chatterjee also questioned the appointment of new office bearers of the party and said that these appointments were not “merit” but on a “quota system” where preferences of individual leaders got precedence. “We have to introspect on what led to such a massive drop in our vote share. What went wrong? We need to fill those gaps and prepare ourselves for the next Lok Sabha polls,” Ms. Chatterjee had said after the party’s civic poll debacle.
