With Arjun Singh's exit, Suvendu Adhikari's importance in Bengal BJP increases

Kolkata, May 23 (IANS) Following the exit of BJP's heavyweight Barrackpore MP and party's state Vice President, Arjun Singh, importance of the West Bengal's Leader of Opposition, Suvendu Adhikari has increased in the party.

The BJP's central leadership, on Monday, has entrusted Adhikari to take charge of the party's organisation set-up in Barrackpore and fill up the structural vacuum created out of the exit of Singh, who rejoined the ruling Trinamool Congress on Sunday evening.

The decision was taken at a organisational meeting of the party's state unit at a hotel in New Town in the northern outskirts of Kolkata on Monday afternoon, which was attended among others BJP's national IT cell chief and party's central observer for West Bengal, Amit Malviya, West Bengal unit chief, Dr Sukanta Majumdar and state General Secretary, Organisation), Amitava Chakraborty, among others. BJP national Vice President and party MP, Dilip Ghosh also attended the meeting virtually.

State BJP sources said that the proposal to make Adhikari in-charge of Barrackpore was mooted by Malviya and the proposal was accepted. It is learnt that on May 26, Adhikari will chair an organizational meeting at Barrackpore and there he will try to have an idea of the existing organisational set up there and the possible vacuum that needs to be filled up following Arjun Singh's exit.

Reacting to the development, Singh said that Adhikari will now understand the difficulties he had been facing in Barrackpore in sailing through the BJP's organisational network in Barrackpore. "But, anyway, the party has given him the charge and I wish him all the best. I will welcome him in my area as the Leader of the Opposition. But I doubt... very soon he will also become redundant in BJP," Singh said.