In BJP Chintan Sabha, Sinha lashes out at detractors: ‘what have you done for party’

It all began when the party workers started hooting when Sinha was called for being felicitated. “This is not required… He is the one who has let the party down,” were some of the comments that were heard from the audience during the meeting presided by Rajya Sabha MP Chandan Mitra. Later, Mitra had to come to the rescue. “Those who are not interested in listening to the speakers may leave the auditorium,” Mitra warned.

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After this, one by one the speakers such as Bikram Sarkar and Subrata ‘Jolu’ Mukherjee blamed lack of organisational strength in the party as the reason behind the failure to encash on the Modi wave. “We need to strengthen the organisation. Differences between members within the party had been major deterrents. A big rally or a meeting will not ensure a win. We must not ignore views of any party member. We need to reach the masses in remote villages. We have won at the Centre in the name of development but somewhere down the line we forgot our priorities,” Mukherjee said.

Sarkar too claimed that he had visited the districts during the polls and had seen that at many places there were no BJP agents at the polling booths. “A lot of soul searching is required and ways to strengthening our weaker areas need to be found,” he said.

Later, as Sinha’s name was announced, about a dozen members of the audience left the auditorium.

Sinha, however, hit back saying that strengthening the party was not his responsibility alone. “Everyone is saying that it is necessary to strengthen the organisation and that there were no agents at the polling booths. They need to ask themselves whether they had contributed enough to the party. Did they attend enough meetings or rallies? Did they face any lathi charge? Only if they ask themselves, they would get the answer why the popularity of the party started declining after six months of ascent,” Sinha said.

Taking a dig at the organiser of the Chintan Sabha, Sinha said he had been asking to call an intellectuals’ meet for a long time. “Now that the elections are round the corner, we have woken up. There had been so many propaganda against the Modi government by intellectuals across the country but none of our intellectuals hit the street to counter those. We didn’t even care to counter the beef eating festival that was carried out here. Intellectuals here are more interested in what post they get in the party,” he said.

The hard hitting talk seemed to have had an effect on Vijayvargiya too who said, “I feel I will have to devote more time and thus will ask party to give me a flat here instead of putting up at the hotel. Every 15 days, I will come down and interact with people here”.

The intellectual cell put up the chintan sabha for introspection as to why the performance of the party had dipped after it paced briefly following the party’s win in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls at the Centre.