At least 2,000 supporters of All India Forward Bloc (AIFB) and a few dozen State and local level leaders joined the BJP on Sunday. While the leaders listed a series of grievances against the leadership for leaving the party, the local and district level leaders underscored political violence. Many said that they left AIFB as the senior leaders failed to “provide any protection.”
The BJP state president, Rahul Sinha, and the general secretary (Bengal), Ashim Sarkar, handed over party’s flag to the leaders and welcomed them. Many of the AIFB leaders targeted party’s State secretary Ashok Ghosh (91) for holding the top position for decades. “I respect him, but is it reasonable to remain in the highest position for ages,” asked one of the former State Secretariat members, Subhasish Dutta.
Incidentally, Mr Ghosh recently got a mention in the Limca Book of Records for serving “the longest term at the helm of the party in a State.” The Records Committee said that Mr Ghosh was elected as the secretary of the party a year after Independence, in 1948 and “since then re-elected to the post 15 times (in 66 years), without a break, the latest being in February, 2013.”
Perhaps, Sunday’s exodus was another record in Mr Ghosh’s political life, as he had perhaps never seen so many supporters leaving the party en bloc.
Children, women and men from various districts of Bengal joined the BJP on Sunday. They came predominantly from Dakshin (south) Dinajpur, Medinipur, Malda, North 24 Paraganas and Kolkata. The supporters were led by AIFB’s former State secretariat members and youth wing (Yuva League) leaders, Ajay Agnihotri and Anirban Chowdhury.
Members of the party’s women’s wing and State secretariat, Bithika Mandal, Sashi Agnihotri and Asma Khatun also left the left-coalition to join the BJP. They took their turns to lambast the 75-year-old party.
“I read in a newspaper that the highest leadership has said we are rotten fruits, spoiled by insects. The leadership forgot that when a tree rots, the fruits naturally get spoiled,” said Bithica Mandal.
On Friday, party’s general secretary Debabrata Biswas had told The Hindu that sooner the “rotten fruits disappear it is better” (for AIFB), alluding at the dissidents who decided to join the BJP.
Some of the erstwhile AIFB members were seemingly emotional while explaining why they had to leave a Left coalition to join a right-wing party.
“We (AIFB) are a nationalist party joining another nationalist party (BJP)…we both believe in the ideas and ideologies of Netaji. But while BJP respects Netaji, AIFB’s senior leaders are using Netaji to do business,” said Ms Mandal.
Addressing the new-comers and his party colleagues, State BJP president Rahul Sinha said the AIFB supporters “liberated” themselves.
