Dramatic footage from the area showed hundreds of people jostling and screaming.
Calcutta:
BJP supporters staged angry protests in front of the party’s electoral office in Kolkata throughout the day today, including interrupting top leaders Mukul Roy, Arjun Singh and Shiv Prakash, to protest against the submission of large numbers of former Trinamool leaders as BJP candidates. This took place one day when Union Minister Amit Shah unexpectedly landed in Calcutta for the night on his way from Guwahati to Delhi and BJP chief JP Nadda landed for a day-long campaign tomorrow.
Dramatic footage from outside the BJP elections office in Hastings showed hundreds of people jostling, yelling and pushing barricades aside in an attempt to force their way into the building. A large police contingent was deployed to control the situation. Several BJP offices in the districts were looted.
The first protesters to arrive arrived around 2pm from Panchla in Howrah. They sat in dharna outside the office with banners and posters calling the BJP candidate, Mohit Ghati, “characterless drunk.” They were joined by protesters from Udaynarayanpur, also in Howrah. At night, people came from Raidighi in South 24 Parganas.
Police put up iron barricades outside the entrance to the building that houses the BJP’s offices on the fourth, seventh and eighth floors, but the crowd repeatedly advanced, trying to tear them down and force their way into the building. The confrontation continued until late at night.
Also at night, agitated BJP workers ransacked the party office in Singur and the BJP district headquarters in Chinsura, both in Hooghly district.
Singur had also been in trouble yesterday, shortly after former Trinamool MLA Rabindranath Bhattacharya was named a BJP candidate. Madhya Pradesh’s education and health minister, who was there for organizing meetings, was locked inside a shop where he was chatting with party workers.
The police rescued him after four hours of imprisonment.
Today, BJP workers closed the office during the day and trashed it at night.
What could be most concerning for the BJP is the looting of its office in Chinsura, where the BJP has sent not a former Trinamool leader but his deputy Locket Chatterjee.
Sources say these seats had strong local contenders for tickets. His supporters have rebelled, threatening to run independent candidates to defeat the official BJP candidates, even if that meant Trinamool succeeded.
Joy Banerjee, a BJP leader who has not been given a ticket, said: “I am thinking of changing my platform.”
This is an unfortunate but temporary situation, said BJP spokesman Samik Bhattacharya.
For the BJP, the list of candidates for the 294 state seats was expected to be a tough balancing act.
In recent months, a steady stream of leaders from the state’s ruling Trinamool Congress has turned to the BJP, leaders who knew they would not be fined again, had mocked Trinamool.
The BJP has given many of them tickets, but has upset their own party workers.
In its list for the third and fourth phase of the polls announced on Saturday, the BJP named 27 and 38 candidates respectively. The list included several movie stars, eight Trinamool defectors and four sitting MPs, including the party’s two-time Union Minister Babul Supriyo.
The list had drawn criticism from Trinamool, which is seeking a third consecutive term in the state.
The party’s passionate deputy, Mohua Moitra, known for her outspoken comments inside and outside parliament, had summed it up. “I love this slow development of the soap opera WB BJP Candidate List. When the ‘world’s largest political party’ lacks enough faces and strength to announce 294 names at once for a state that says it will sweep!” your tweet read.
The gigantic eight-phase elections in Bengal will begin on March 27 and continue until April 29. Votes will be counted on May 2.
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