BJP President JP Nadda’s open letter to cadre highlights West Bengal

BJP Chief J P Nadda on Wednesday put the spotlight on poll-bound West Bengal in his open letter to party workers, written on the occasion of completion of his first year in office.

He recalled the “attack” on his convoy last month in the state, which triggered a political storm between the BJP and the Trinamool Congress. He issued the letter on a day the BJP huddled in a strategy meeting with party observers for West Bengal.

Meanwhile, TMC MLA Arindam Bhattacharya, a former Youth Congress chief who joined Mamata Banerjee’s party years back slammed the TMC leadership as he joined the BJP in Delhi in presence of its senior leaders on Wednesday.

TMC legislator joins BJP

As the party leadership got into a huddle to discuss election strategy for the state, Nadda’s letter released by the party gave an inkling of how the party seeks to project the BJP as a contender to power in the state, highlighting ‘lawlessness’ and cult of ‘political violence’ in West Bengal.

“When the Party President of the nation’s largest political party can face such a life-threatening attack in broad daylight in West Bengal, this can be easily understood in what tough conditions, the average party workers would have been working. In the last few years, more than 300 party workers and supporters of the party have been brutally murdered in the state. I take the vow that their martyrdom will not go in vain. It is an error on part of the Trinamool government to feel that the ideas and ideology of BJP can be crushed by killing its workers,” Nadda said in the letter.

Highlighting the victory of the BJP in Bihar Assembly polls, by-polls in 10 states last year and recent DDC polls in Jammu and Kashmir, Nadda expressed confidence that party workers will ensure the BJP’s victory not only in West Bengal but also the other poll going states Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam this year. The BJP is organisationally weak in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Nadda thanked the party workers of another poll-bound state Kerala and Jammu and Kashmir. He said the BJP does not believe in the politics of violence, and will “keep responding through democratic means”.