Burning tires, blocked roads, and calls for rebellion: Bengal’s saffron camp is falling apart from the inside just weeks before the election.They didn’t come out to fight the Trinamool Congress.They came out to fight their own party. On March 20, BJP workers in Kalna openly defied the law by burning tires, blocking roads, and lying flat on the tarmac. All of this was because of one name on the candidate list: Siddharth Majumdar.The BJP has given Majumdar, a former Congress leader who switched to the BJP, the party ticket for the upcoming West Bengal assembly elections. The saffron camp is having a hard time controlling the anger that has come from that decision, which was made by leaders who were far away from the ground.
“Manbona, manbona”—won’t accept, won’t accept. On Thursday, that was the chant that rang out in the smoke-filled streets of Kalna.
Videos of the protest spread quickly on social media. They showed workers—people who have spent years quietly knocking on doors, putting up flags, and building the BJP’s presence in Kalna from the ground up—now lying down in the street and refusing to move.The pictures are raw, dramatic, and very embarrassing for a party that values discipline above all else.The main complaint is simple and bitter: why should a man who spent his whole political life in the Congress camp walk in and take the ticket that local workers think they earned?Majumdar is not just an outsider to the BJP’s grassroots members; he is a symbol of everything they think is wrong with how big parties make decisions.Similar protests have happened in Ranaghat and other districts. This shows that the anger over “parachute” candidates isn’t just in Kalna; it’s a fault line across several seats that the BJP needs to win.
There have been a lot of political tensions like this in Bengal’s past. Every party takes a calculated risk when it smells power by accepting defectors. A defector can bring name recognition and the ability to shift votes, but they also lose loyal workers who feel left out. Most of the time, the anger is hidden. Not this time.There has been no public response from the BJP’s state leadership to the Kalna protests yet.Every hour of silence, though, is another hour when videos of their own workers setting tires on fire are going around on WhatsApp and Instagram. These videos are becoming the party’s most popular image in a district where they really need it.
The BJP is fighting a war on two fronts: one against the Trinamool Congress and one against itself. This is happening weeks before the Bengal elections. The final count on results day may depend on which battle is harder to win.
