JP Nadda, Amit Shah Bengal visit to set tone for Lok Sabha polls

Kolkata: West Bengal continues to be a top priority for the BJP top brass ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections as Union Home Minister Amit Shah and national president JP Nadda will land in Kolkata late on Monday, for a day-long meeting with functionaries on Tuesday.

The day for the two leaders will begin with prayers at a gurudwara on Veer Bal Diwas, followed by a visit to Kalighat Temple. An organisational meeting of the party is scheduled, thereafter. In the evening, Nadda and Shah are expected to be present at a social media volunteer meeting at the National Library. A second organisational meeting is scheduled after that.

With the bigwigs to guide them, the state leaders are confident of a robust performance in the elections next year. State BJP chief Sukanta Majumdar, on Monday, said PM Narendra Modi is going to return to power with a record win that will be difficult to match in the future.
Majumdar said a 'significant number of seats' will be won from the state. "The target number of seats – 35 (out of 42 Lok Sabha seats from Bengal) – has been fixed by Amit Shahji. We are moving with that target in mind, and the result will be somewhere close to that," he said.

Trinamool meanwhile has taken a critical stand against Majumdar’s recent remarks, where he terms people as a “Leftist-product” – the ones who are attaching greater importance to playing football, over reciting Gita.
The Trinamool alleged Majumdar has insulted Swami Vivekananda when considered in the context of the spiritual leader’s famous quotation that highlights the importance of physical strength, yet doesn’t intend to say that reciting Bhagavad Gita is less important.

“Amit Shah’s impending visit is nothing but a futile exercise in damage control after Sukanta Majumdar publicly insulted Swami Vivekananda. While the Home Minister is here to clean up the mess left by his party’s state president, he better step up and offer an apology,” the Trinamool posted on X.

Majumdar, on Monday, clarified that he stands by his comments as he spoke of those people who are commenting, out of context, on Vivekananda in the present. He added that being half-read is dangerous and that the Trinamool representatives have not read Vivekananda’s message completely, decoding it partly without getting the complete sense.
The Trinamool youth wing will protest in all towns and blocks in the state on Tuesday, said sources.