According to TMC sources, on January 1 to celebrate the occasion of the party’s foundation day special programme will be organized at every block. |
Kolkata: At a time when Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is struggling to meet the target of membership drive set by Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Bengal, Trinamool Congress (TMC) had planned more mass connect programmes for the entire month of January.
According to TMC sources, on January 1 to celebrate the occasion of the party’s foundation day special programme will be organized at every block.
On January 12 birthday celebration of Swami Vivekananda, on January 23 birthday celebration of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose will also be organized at every block level. On January 30 programmes will be organized for the death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. And all these days foods and other essentials things will be given to the needy.
On the other hand, Union Home Minister Amit Shah while visiting Kolkata has set a target of one crore new members to the leaders and workers of the saffron camp. While setting the target Shah was also hopeful to form the state government during the 2026 state Assembly election.
Ace actor and politician Mithun Chakraborty who was also present at the meeting also made it clear that the saffron camp is confident to topple the TMC government from West Bengal.
According to BJP sources, the membership drive which was supposed to be over by November end was extended once till December 15 and now again till December 31 as the saffron camp didn’t reach their target and the total number of new members have reached just 40 lakh plus.
Recently BJP’s central observer to West Bengal Sunil Bansal had held a meeting with party leaders and workers in Kolkata and also met party West Bengal MPs at the national capital to take stock of the situation.
BJP spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP Shamik Bhattacharya said that the process of membership drive is continuing and also mentioned that the party will reach its target.
TMC general secretary Kunal Ghosh said, “BJP doesn’t have any organization and on top of that there is infighting within the party. They are going to wedding houses to get new members through missed calls.”
Political analyst Shubhamoy Moitra said, “The membership drive has generally nothing to do with the election results. From the 2019 Lok Sabha elections BJP is doing well in West Bengal. Thus, this membership drive will not make much difference. We have seen earlier that even after going through a detailed process of becoming a member of CPI (M), people later switched to other political parties. Thus. ideology is not related to membership too. Thus, parties which are structured or not, their membership drive will not have any impact on elections. To conclude, an unstructured party like TMC is also regularly sweeping polls.”
