On November 28, when bye-lection results from three assembly seats in West Bengal were announced, senior BJP leaders from the state were in Jharkhand, campaigning for the ongoing assembly elections there. The results were disappointing for the BJP as it lost to the Trinamool in all three seats—Kaliagunj, Kharagpur and Karimpur.
The BJP, which won 18 of 42 seats in the Lok Sabha elections, has been working hard to unseat Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. “We will introspect about the bypoll results immediately,” said Suresh Pujari, one of the three BJP state in charges responsible for West Bengal. The state BJP leadership blamed the controversy surrounding the National Register of Citizens for the defeat. “The Trinamool used our NRC campaign to their advantage. It injected fear even in the minds of Hindus that they would be driven out by the NRC process,” said BJP state vice president Biswapriya Roychowdhury.
This story is from the December 15, 2019 edition of THE WEEK.
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This story is from the December 15, 2019 edition of THE WEEK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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