Suggest ways to overcome booth-wise vote margin deficit: Bengal BJP chief to affiliated organisations 

Kolkata, July 5 (IANS) Bengal BJP chief Samik Bhattacharya has directed its affiliated organisations to suggest strategies to overcome or minimise the booth-wise vote margin deficit with Trinamool Congress in the crucial Assembly elections scheduled next year.

According to the BJP state committee, Bhattacharya is of the view that the role of the affiliated organisations will be equally crucial to that of the state party unit in overcoming or minimising the booth-wise vote margin deficit with Trinamool Congress.

"Precisely that is why he had meetings with the representatives of the affiliated organisations on Friday evening. The party's central observers, Sunil Bansal and Mangal Pandey, were also present at the meeting.

In that meeting, Bhattacharya directed the representatives of the different mass organisations to immediately start the process for calculating the booth-wise vote margin deficits and suggest strategies to overcome them," said the state committee member on Saturday.

As of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the votes secured by the BJP were 23,327,349 against Trinamool Congress' 27,564,561, which meant the vote margin deficit was 42,37,212. Percentage-wise, the BJP secured 40.7 per cent as against Trinamool Congress’s figure of 43.3 per cent.

On the other hand, in 2024, the Congress-Left Front alliance secured 62,35,669 popular votes.

"As per a rough internal calculation, considering that Muslim votes went to Trinamool Congress' kitty in 2024, the majority of 62 lakh votes that went in favour of the Congress-Left Front alliance were Hindu votes or votes from non-Muslim other religions. Now, if we can turn around and consolidate a large portion of these Hindu votes in our favour in 2026, the vote margin deficit of around 42 lakhs could be minimised to a great extent," said the state committee member.

At the same time, efforts will be made to consolidate Hindu votes from non-Muslim other religions, which went to Trinamool Congress till the 2024 polls, into the BJP's fold, he said.

Bhattacharya also admitted that the vote consolidation process, as aimed by the BJP, will be comparatively easier in the metro and urban pockets than in the rural belts.