Top BJP leaders give campaigns a miss,Kolkata Civic Poll 2015,Kolkata Municipal Corporation, west bengal local body election, KMC Election 2015

Kolkata Civic Poll: Top BJP leaders give campaigns a miss

KOLKATA: BJP's central leadership is not sending any of its top leaders to Bengal to campaign for the party for this month's civic elections. This has raised questions within the party and a section of state BJP leaders are of the opinion that the national leadership is not very pleased with the state unit for its dismal performance in the recent by-elections.

The state leaders also feel that the state unit had got enough support from the central leadership during by-elections to one lok sabha and one assembly seat in the state, but the party had failed to win any of the two. Infact, in Bongaon lok sabha by-elections, BJP got less votes than the CPIM and secured third position.

In September, BJP president Amit Shah had campaigned for the party candidates who contested by-elections in two assembly seats of Chowringhee in the city and Basirhat (South) in North 24-Parganas district. But this time around, neither Shah nor any of BJP's top leaders from Delhi campaigned for the party for this month's civic elections even though this is the most crucial polls before next year's assembly elections.

Interestingly, the Centre has also refused to send its forces for the civic polls even though the state BJP unit had been de manding for the same much before the poll dates were announced. Mamata Banerjee, who was vehemently opposing deployment of central forces for the civic elections, had ultimately agreed to the state election commission's plea for the same and her government had written to the Centre seeking deployment of its forces.

There is no doubt that the state BJP unit is embarrassed as their own government in Delhi has refused to send forces for Bengal's civic elections. To overcome this, a BJP delegation on Thursday met the state election commissioner Sushanta Ranjan Upadhaya and urged him to postpone the civic polls until and unless Central forces were available for the state's civic elections.

"The commissioner has raised certain legal issues as obstacles for postponement of polls. But we insisted that he has the authority to defer elections for the time being and wait for deployment of central forces," BJP state general secretary Ashim Sarkar, who was part of the delegation, told ET on Thursday.

But Upadhaya has refused to accept BJP's demand for poll postponement and made it clear to the party delegation that elections in Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) will take place on April 18 and polls in 92 municipalities across the state will be held on April 25.

src:economictimes

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