With the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in the backdrop and considering the drooping morale of the common party workers in West Bengal, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership in the state is depending on its top central leadership’s visit to the state to boost the confidence of grassroots-level party workers.

Besides hoping that the two-day visit of Union home minister Amit Shah on May 5-6 will have some positive impact on the declining morale of the party workers, the state leadership is trying hard to persuade Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the party’s national president JP Nadda to visit the state in the coming months and cheer up the party workers through vocal tonic.

According to party’s national vice-president and MP Dilip Ghosh, while Nadda is expected in the state in June to hold meetings with state leaders as well as attend public rallies, there is also an attempt to ensure a visit by the Prime Minister either in July or in August.

“We have invited all our major central leaders to come to the state. The home minister is coming tomorrow on a two-day visit. In all probability, our national president is also coming to the state in June. We hope that the Prime Minister will also come after that,” said Ghosh, also the past state president of BJP in West Bengal.

Political observers feel that considering the scattered organisational network of BJP in the state and growing infighting in state leadership, the party’s West Bengal unit is getting heavily dependent on the presence of central leadership for a satisfactory result in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, BJP bagged victory in 18 out of 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state.

Trinamul Congress leadership has ridiculed these possible trips of central BJP leaders to West Bengal. According to TMC state general secretary and the party spokesman Kunal Ghosh, without a mass base such trips will not succeed in winning the confidence of the voters.

“Before the 2021 West Bengal assembly polls, the Prime Minister, home minister and BJP’s national president made several trips to the state. But in the polls, the voters rejected the BJP,” Ghosh said.