Bengal polls: Hooghly erupts over BJP list, party offices face heat

CHINSURAH/KOLKATA: Simmering resentment within the BJP over candidate selection spilled onto the streets of Hooghly on Monday, with angry party supporters ransacking the BJP district office in Chinsurah and putting the Chandernagore party office under lock and key.
Party old guards from Singur threatened to take the “ultimate course” if the BJP brass didn’t replace 88-year-old Rabindranath Bhattacharya, a former minister and now candidate who joined the party just days before the nominee list was released.BJP supporters, led by Santosh Pandey, had “mobbed” party observer and Madhya Pradesh health minister Vishwal Sarang at a private lodge in Apurbapur on Sunday, minutes after Bhattacharya was given a ticket.
On Monday, a BJP worker made a “suicide” attempt on railway tracks, fearing that a former Trinamool Congress strongman who recently joined the BJP may get the ticket from Hooghly’s Saptagram. Nirupam Mukherjee, claiming to be a BJP worker since 1988, courted “suicide” as BJP leader Locket Chatterjee made a bid to arrange a ticket for “sand mafia” Debaprasad Biswas.
BJP veteran Krishna Bhattacharya from Konnagar has started writing graffiti, projecting herself as an independent candidate from Uttarpara against the “corrupt and tolabaj” official BJP candidate without naming Prabir Ghoshal, who switched loyalties from Trinamool to BJP.
Trinamool leaders in Hooghly were amused at the wrangling match within the “country’s largest party”. Most Hooghly seats go to polls on April 6 and 10.
At Chandernagore’s Bagbazar More, angry BJP supporters took out a rally on Monday afternoon demanding that local candidates be given a chance after the party gave a ticket to Bengal BJP office-bearer Dipanjan Guha.
BJP old guard Tandra Bhattacharya, fighting elections in Bengal since the days of Tapan Sikdar, said: “I fail to understand the logic behind candidate selection. None from the party told us about it; forget taking feedback.”
Discontent is also brewing in South 24 Parganas as many BJP aspirants suspect that their names might have been turned down during screening based on reports from former Kolkata mayor Sovan Chatterjee and his friend Baisakhi Banerjee. The duo quit the BJP on Sunday.