Suvendu to make BJP rally debut in E Burdwan today – Times of India

Kolkata: Suvendu Adhikari will begin his new innings in BJP with a public rally in East Burdwan’s Ketugram, adjacent to Birbhum, where Union home minister Amit Shah held a roadshow on Sunday. Suvendu will hold the meeting along with Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh on Tuesday.
Suvendu will also join a roadshow in the Adhikari fort at Dakshin Kanthi on December 24, a day after a Trinamool Congress rally in the same place.
“Suvendu will go with me to Katwa tomorrow. We will hold two public meetings. We will form teams and tour districts and while doing so, we will lay siege to the Trinamool camp,” Ghosh said on Monday.
An adept organizer, Suvendu chose Ketugram because a section of TMC leaders in the assembly constituencies — Ketugram, Ausgram and Mangalkot — is unhappy with the ways of Trinamool Birbhum president Anubrata Mandal, who oversees the organization in these three East Burdwan assembly segments within Bolpur parliamentary constituency.
Even Trinamool minister Siddiqullah Chowdhury, without naming Mandal, spoke out against running of the party in these parts of Burdwan. Chowdhury had openly said he wouldn’t take responsibility for the party fortunes there. Suvendu wants to tap the “dissent” within Trinamool and draw the disgruntled to BJP.
Central forces from Jharkhand reached Suvendu’s ‘Santi Kunj’ home at Kanthi in two vehicles at 11am on Monday, three days after the Centre provided him Z-category security. Officers made a recce of the house while he was away.
The former Trinamool rebel didn’t take the bulletproof car on Monday to the West Bengal assembly, where he met Speaker Biman Bandyopadhyay, who had sought clarifications on his resignation letter. Bandyopadhyay, who didn’t accept the letter on December 16, said after talking to Suvendu he was satisfied that the Nandigram MLA had tendered his resignation “voluntarily” and with “genuine intent”. The Speaker gave effect to the resignation from December 21, two days after Suvendu formally joined BJP.
Before leaving the assembly premises, Suvendu called on Leader of the Opposition Abdul Mannan. The BJP leader then called on governor Jagdeep Dhankhar at Raj Bhavan; he had written to the governor about his apprehensions of action by Trinamool against him and his loyalists out of “political vendetta”.
While addressing a rally in Asansol, which had witnessed riots in 2018, Ghosh said: “Terrorists, Rohingyas, infiltrators from Bangladesh are taking your share of government benefits, rations and jobs. Neither CPM nor Trinamool did anything to check this infiltration. I am not talking about refugees from Bangladesh. The Centre has promulgated the Citizenship (Amendment) Act to give them citizenship.”
(With inputs from Suman Mandal, Md Asif)