Amit Shah spends last day of 2025 setting BJP’s house in West Bengal in order ahead of 2026 polls

Kolkata: Union Home Minister and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s chief poll strategist, Amit Shah, spent the last day of 2025 trying to set the saffron party’s house in West Bengal in order and to add momentum to its preparations for taking on the ruling Trinamool Congress in the 2026 assembly elections in the state.

Shah arrived in Kolkata on Monday and concluded his three-day visit to the city on Wednesday with a meeting with the legislators, parliamentarians, and councillors of the BJP from across West Bengal, along with the leaders holding key positions in the party organisations. He asked for the end of factionalism within the party and brought Suvendu Adhikari, the Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly, and Dilip Ghosh, the former state president of the party, together, although they were purported to be at loggerheads.

Union Home Minister put the BJP’s state machinery in poll mode and asked the party’s public representatives, be it in the state assembly, or in the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha, or the municipalities or panchayats, to spend at least four days a week in their respective constituencies and hold at least five meetings daily. He made it clear that the aspirants for the BJP’s nominations for contesting the assembly elections would have to prove their mettle over the next three months.

“I can't say much, but you will see an active Dilip Ghosh in the 2026 polls. I was called to share my experiences and opinions,” Ghosh, who has been sulking after being allegedly sidelined within the BJP’s unit in West Bengal, told journalists after the meeting with Shah.

Ghosh, a former ‘pracharak’ of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), had led the BJP as its West Bengal unit chief during the 2021 state assembly polls, which had established the saffron party as the principal challenger to the ruling Trinamool Congress. The BJP’s tally had gone up from just three seats in the 294-member assembly in 2016 to 77 in 2021.

But, in the past four years, Adhikari, who quit the TMC to join the BJP ahead of the 2021 polls, emerged as the saffron party’s most prominent face in West Bengal.

The relations between Ghosh and Adhikari turned sour after the veteran leader was asked to contest from the state’s Bardhaman-Durgapur Lok Sabha constituency in the 2024 parliamentary elections, instead of Medinipur, where he had won in 2019. Adhikari, according to the party insiders, played a key role in changing the constituency of Ghosh, who ultimately lost to the TMC’s Kirti Azad.

Ghosh defied the party’s call for boycotting the inauguration of Lord Jagannath’s temple in Digha by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. He not only attended the event on April 30 but also had a courtesy meeting with the ruling Trinamool Congress’s supremo, creating a flutter within the BJP.

“Every BJP activist and supporter has been energised by the visit of Amit Shah ji. We will win the 2026 polls and bring about true change in this state,” Adhikari said on Wednesday.

The meeting, chaired by Shah in Kolkata on Wednesday, had Samik Bhattacharya, the state BJP president, and his immediate predecessor, Sukanta Majumdar, Union Minister of State for Education, among the attendees. A BJP leader said that the Union Home Minister promised that he would spend a few days of every month in West Bengal over the next three months to boost the party’s morale during the run-up to the assembly elections.

Shah on Tuesday alleged that Mamata’s Trinamool Congress government was endangering the national security of India by facilitating illegal migration from Bangladesh and allowing them to settle down in West Bengal for vested political interests. Mamata, on the other hand, sought to turn the tables on Shah, tacitly referring to the April 22 terrorist attack in Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir, and the November 10 explosion near Red Fort in Delhi. She blamed him for failing to stop the infiltration of the terrorists from Pakistan and areas illegally occupied by Pakistan into Kashmir.