Union home minister Amit Shah’s proposed visit to Bengal next week might be curtailed to a great extent, insiders in the party’s state committee said.
“Instead of a two-day visit, as originally scheduled, the trip might be curtailed to just a day. At the same, the minister might also limit his movement within the state capital,” he added.
As per the earlier plan, the minister was to arrive in Kolkata on 8 May and attend a public rally in either of the two adjacent districts, Nadia and Murshidabad. He was also supposed to attend a cultural function on 9 May on the occasion of the birth anniversary of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, hold a meeting with top state party leaders and fly back to New Delhi the same day.
“However, in the changed schedule, Shah’s programme in the state, in all probability, will be curtailed to just 9 May. On that day, he will attend the cultural programme, hold a meeting with state leaders and return to the national capital. During this visit, he will not be addressing any public rally like he did at Birbhum last month,” the state committee member said.
BJP’s state president in and party Lok Sabha member Sukanta Majumdar also confirmed that the Union minister’s state visit has been trimmed to just a day. Now, two different reasons are being floated by two sections of the state leadership as reasons why the Union minister’s trip to West Bengal will be curtailed.
Shah’s busy schedule elsewhere is the official reason for the rescheduled trip. However, another member of the state committee said that since Bengalis will be in a celebratory mood from 8 May owing to Gurudev’s birth anniversary the next day, the party leadership did not think it wise to have a full-fledged public political meeting. Last time, Amit Shah addressed a public meeting in Bengal was on 14 April at Suri in Birbhum.
During the meeting, he claimed that if the BJP manages to win 35 of 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state in the next year’s general elections, the government will collapse much before its term (till 2026)