West Bengal is witnessing a higher-stake battle with the BJP attempting to overthrow the incumbent Mamata Banerjee-led TMC government. One could recall the 2016 West Bengal polls when the BJP could only win 3 seats. However, 3 years later, it won 18 out of 42 parliamentary constituencies gorgeous every person. The outcome not only boosted the morale of the saffron party but sent a message to the TMC indicating what is on the cards. When men and women delved deeper into the BJP’s 2016 victory, they located out that its mentor organisation Rashtriya Swaymsevak Sangh (RSS) had been burning mid-evening oil in the state for the final couple of years to strengthen the base of the saffron party.
Fast forward to 2021 when the BJP is leaving no stone unturned to get a favourable outcome, noticed in the back finish are two RSS guys who have been collecting bits and pieces of the state’s political secrets to prepare a recipe for BJP’s victory.
While quite a few RSS workers are campaigning for the BJP in Bengal, two small-recognized guys are working behind the scenes setting up the preferred framework for the party in the state. These two are Shiv Prakash, an RSS pracharak and former ABVP leader Arvind Menon. Prakash was deputed to the party in 2014 following he had overseen a saffron sweep of Western Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha elections.
Given the value of Bengal polls, Prakash, 53, was asked by party president JP Nadda to shift his headquarter from Delhi and concentrate on Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. However, the higher-stakes battle for the eastern state has forced him to be permanently stationed in Bengal. Prakash accepts that he has spent more than 60 per cent of his time in West Bengal given that joining the BJP. A resident of Uttar Pradesh, Prakash is now not only fluent in Bangla but has Bengal’s statistics on his fingertip.
Prakash had joined RSS as a pracharak in 1986. He is now in charge of the BJP’s organisational affairs in West Bengal. He is credited with constructing the BJP’s grassroots in the state.
According to an Indian Express report, the BJP has set up committees at most of the 78,000 original polling booths (quantity of polling booths have enhanced this time due to COVID-19) in the state beneath the leadership of Prakash given that 2015. He claims to have inducted as quite a few as 17,500 quick-time booth workers split into more than 12,000 “Shakti Kendras” (energy centres), a unit devised by him. Prakash claimed that the BJP now has vistaraks in just about every assembly segments just like the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. He stated that men and women had been initially reluctant to join the BJP but the party now have no dearth of workers.
Keeping a low-profile has helped Prakash carry his work with no disturbance in Bengal’s violence-ridden politics and he claims to have travelled the complete state quite a few instances with no safety.
Another man, Arvind Menon is BJP’s national secretary and one of the two co-incharges in West Bengal. Menon is a Malayali Nair from Varanasi but he as well speaks Bangla fluently. He came to Bengal as a portion of the BJP Yuva Morcha, touring the state extensively. He is stated to have played a crucial function in the 2017 Gujarat Assembly elections. He has been working to preserve the BJP’s flock with each other in the state by bridging the gap amongst the party’s old and new guards.
Elections for the 294 seats of West Bengal will be held in eight phases beginning March 27 and ending on April 29. The counting of votes will take spot on May 2.