In his first visit to Bengal today, Nitin Nabin to focus on West Burdwan
Kolkata: The newly elected national president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Nitin Nabin, is scheduled to visit West Bengal on Tuesday for the first time since taking office. During his two-day visit, he will concentrate his efforts on the West Burdwan district.
As per the schedule of the two-day visit, Nabin will land at Andal Airport near the industrial township of Asansol in West Burdwan district at around 4 p.m. on Tuesday.
In the evening, he will attend a programme called ‘Kamal Mela’ at Chitralaya Maidan at Durgapur, another industrial township in the district. After that, he will hold a meeting with the members of the state BJP core committee. On Wednesday, he will return via Andal Airport after completing several programmes in the Durgapur-Asansol belt.
Now questions are being raised about why the state capital, Kolkata, has been kept out of Nabin’s two-day visit. A section of political observers feels that the answer probably lies in the population-demography in West Burdwan districts, especially in the two industrial townships of Durgapur and Asansol, and their coal-belt areas like Jamuria, Andal, and Raniganj, among others.
Traditionally, the non-Bengali population in the state, especially the Hindi-speaking population, has been a dedicated vote bank of the BJP. The proportion of Hindi-speaking voters is extremely high in the West Burdwan district, especially in the industrial and adjacent coal belts.
Probably, that is the reason, as political observers feel, the BJP’s newly elected national president has focused on this belt in his first visit to the state.
At the same time, feel political observers, if the BJP wants to do well in the Assembly elections in West Bengal, it will have to concentrate on this part, where it still has a substantial vote bank.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, which saw the BJP’s best-ever electoral performance in West Bengal, its candidates got elected from a majority of the seats in this belt. However, that success in 2019 could not be continued in the 2021 Assembly elections and the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. So, this time, feel observers, the BJP is laying special focus on this belt.