The saffron camp’s poor show in the West Bengal by-elections, failing to retain one seat and losing other five, has slowed down the party’s ongoing membership drive in the state, sources in the Bharatiya Janata Party said.
A leader in the party hierarchy admitted that Saturday’s results of the November 13 bypoll have demotivated the larger section of the party’s rank and file.
“The pace of the membership drive started slowing down even on Saturday, immediately after the announcement of the results. Our local level leaders got demotivated when the party failed to retain the Madarihat seat which we won in 2016 and 2021 Assembly elections and also got a significant lead in this year’s Lok Sabha polls,” said a Bharatiya Janata Party leader.
The membership drive, which was launched nationally by Prime Minister Narendra Modi On September 2, is set to end on November 30.
In Bengal, it was relaunched by Union Home minister Amit Shah on October 27 as the state leadership were busy organising mass support to secure electoral dividend in the backdrop of August 9 RG Kar rape and murder incident.
As Shah had given the Bengal BJP the daunting task of meeting the target of one crore membership from the state within a November 30 deadline, party insiders said the current membership data stood at nearly 30 lakh now.
“Only three days left to meet the target within the deadline. With the party’s debacle in the by-elections, meeting the target seems to be an impossible task to do,” said the leader.
Before the results of the by-elections in Bengal, the BJP was recording more than 200 new memberships on an average every day. “But the party’s national general secretary BL Santosh came down heavily on us in a recent meeting with Bengal’s top leadership expressing his unhappiness over the issue of the pace of the membership drive,” said another leader who was present in the meeting.
Sources in the party said the average membership collection has come down below 50 per day since the results were declared.
In 2018, Bengal BJP registered more than 80,000 names during Membership drive. The saffron camp terminates membership after every six years and interested person are to enroll themselves as new members again.
Sensing that reaching near the one lakh membership target within the deadline will not be possible, state BJP president Sukanta Majumdar formally approached the party’s national leadership on last Friday requesting an extension.
“But the national leaders has not yet granted the extension,” said another leader of the party.
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