Bengal BJP relaunches 'Sonar Bangla' dream aiming 2024 General Elections
Kolkata/IBNS: Drawing political life from the recent developments in West Bengal, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has relaunched its unfulfilled dream of making "Sonar Bangla" in the run up to the 2024 General Elections in the country.
With a little more than a year's time, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will face his second re-election and his BJP will look to make a fresh splash in West Bengal that yielded 18 Lok Sabha seats in 2019.
Though the 2021 assembly elections were an upset for the BJP that had hoped to uninstall the Mamata government, the recent corruption allegations against the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) have given political dividends to the saffron camp.
As BJP top brass is set to visit the state, the saffron camp is eyeing to replicate 2019 performance of course not snubbing the vital 2023 panchayat polls that will test the organisational strengths of respective parties.
Speaking to IBNS, BJP leader Rahul Sinha said, "We all have started our campaigns targeting the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. In tune with that, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, party national president Jagat Prakash Nadda will come multiple times. They will tour various districts and address massive rallies."
"The lower rungs of the party have already started campaigning. So the campaign targeting 2024 Lok Sabha polls will quite naturally work for the upcoming 2023 panchayat elections," he added.
The TMC was embarrassed last year after a huge sum of money was recovered from its erstwhile top minister Partha Chatterjee's close Arpita Mukherjee's residences in connection with the teachers' recruitment scam. Both have been arrested.
The latest instance of corruption allegation stems from the selection of beneficiaries in the Centre's Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, a central government scheme which aims to build houses for the poor.
Speaking on the issues the party would like to focus on, Sinha says, "Our aim will be to make Sonar Bangla. We want to make Bengal free of corruption, fear and violence and put it into pro-development track. We want to highlight this campaign.
"People are aware of what is happening in the state. Everyone knows that West Bengal is exclusive in violence, corruption."
After Union Home Minister and then BJP national president Amit Shah had set 23 seats as target to win, the saffron party had stunned the TMC in 2019 by clinching 18.