Kolkata (03/03): On Saturday, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) revealed 20 out of 42 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in West Bengal, a state governed by Mamata Banerjee. This move comes after the BJP achieved its highest ever electoral success at both national and state levels in recent times.
The announcement of candidates for the eastern state follows Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s extensive development initiatives in the Trinamool Congress stronghold. The BJP, aiming to surpass its previous record of 18 seats in the 2019 elections, has nominated its state president Sukanta Majumdar, along with two Union ministers, Nisith Pramanik and Shantanu Thakur, for the general elections.
Once a stronghold of the Left for 34 years prior to Mamata Banerjee’s rise to power, Bengal has become a key focus for the BJP, especially since 2014. Last April, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, during a rally in Birbhum, set a target of winning 35 seats in the state.
- In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP secured two seats when Narendra Modi was elected as Prime Minister for the first time. Five years later, the saffron party achieved a significant milestone by winning 18 seats. The BJP’s electoral success peaked in the 2021 assembly elections, where it won 77 seats.
The BJP has actively sought to criticize Mamata Banerjee on various issues, with the recent focus being the incident in Sandeshkhali village. Prime Minister Modi criticized the Bengal CM over Sheikh Shahjahan, a TMC leader accused of sexual assault, who was eventually arrested just before the Prime Minister’s visit to the state.
“The entire nation witnessed what the Trinamool Congress did to the women of Sandeshkhali. The entire nation is outraged. The spirit of Raja Ram Mohan Roy must have been deeply saddened by the events in Sandeshkhali… the TMC was shielding the accused leader, and it was only after pressure from BJP leaders that the police arrested him yesterday,” the Prime Minister stated in Hooghly on Friday.
