BJP’s central leadership has engaged a private voluntary organization to visit Bengal to verify how far human rights are protected in the state. The organization has formed a team comprising a retired judge, retired IPS officer, two senior lawyers and a journalist who are scheduled to visit different areas particularly in rural Bengal during a two-day tour from Wednesday. 

According to an insider in the Bengal BJP unit, party president Sukanta Majumder and Leader of Opposition suvendu Adhikary may also meet the team to brief the latter about alleged deteriorating law and order situation in the state. 

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The state BJP unit has also formed a separate team comprising party leaders like Bharati Ghosh and Dinesh Trivedi to coordinate with the central observers of the private organization. The central team would focus on several issues starting from alleged corruption in school teachers and group D employees’ recruitment, political violence leading to incidents of murders, reports of bomb blasts in many areas across districts and other law and order problems in the state.

The team members would also talk to people belonging to different walks of life seeking the latters’ views on human rights’ protection issues in the state, sources said. It may also visit the state several other times before the elections in rural bodies scheduled likely in April, it was learnt.

 Earlier with the directives of the High Court a team of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) had visited the state to inspect situations during post-assembly polls violence in 2021. The court had directed the commission to visit Bengal after the opposition parties, mainly BJP, filed a case alleging large-scale post-poll violence unleashed by the ruling Trinamul Congress in the state. 

Political observers in the city felt that the visit of the team engaged by the party’s central leadership to the state seems significant this time particularly at the backdrop against when the Mamata Banerjee government is facing an unprecedented crisis owing to charges of corruption starting from teachers’ recruitment to the PM Awas Yojana.