BJP President JP Nadda to visit West Bengal for a two-day visit on June 7-8

To cheer up the falling morale of the grassroots level BJP workers in West Bengal and to find ways for arresting the exodus of senior party leaders, BJP's national president, J.P. Nadda, is likely to make a visit to West Bengal for two days. In all probability, his two-day visit will be on June 7 and June 8.

A state committee leader of the BJP, who did not wish to be named, said that on Wednesday a phone call came to the party's state committee in Kolkata from the national headquarters in New Delhi. "In that phone call, all the state committee leaders were asked not to schedule any other programme in the state and wait for the next round of instructions from New Delhi. As our national president is scheduled to come to the state in June this year and today's phone call was an indication enough to infer that the scheduled two-day visit would be on June 7 and June 8," the state committee member said.

BJP's national vice president and party MP, Dilip Ghosh said that Nadda's visit in June was decided much before. "He will be coming to attend a meeting with state BJP leaders in West Bengal," Ghosh said.

It is learnt that during the two-day visit, Nadda, besides having meetings with the members of the state committee, will also hold a separate meeting with the elected legislators and Lok Sabha members from the state.

Party insiders said that in the recent past often the party's state unit had hit the headlines for wrong reasons like factional infighting and at times the infighting at the grassroots levels have even gone up to the upper levels of the leadership. "At the same time, the exit of senior party leaders like the BJP Lok Sabha member from Barrackpore, Arjun Singh had made things worse. Our national president is expected to give some strong guidelines on how to get over this infighting and arrest the exodus of senior leaders from the party. Some initial strategy discussion for the panchayat elections next year might also come up for discussions," the state committee leader said.

Party sources said that there are also apprehensions of cross-voting in West Bengal in the forthcoming Presidential polls. Nadda's forthcoming West Bengal tour is also expected to finalize the strategy on this count.