KOLKATA: BJP “is not fighting Muslims… and the state’s plurality needs to be saved”, Samik Bhattacharya mentioned Thursday, quickly after taking up because the occasion’s new state president.“There is a conscious effort to divide Bengal on the basis of religion. The minority community should understand we are not fighting against them. We are fighting against the forces that shove stones in their boys’ hands. We want to replace thosestones with books. We want to replace the swords in their hands with pens,” he mentioned.Bhattacharya’s line contrasts sharply with the shrill anti-Muslim pitch adopted by his BJP colleague and meeting opposition chief Suvendu Adhikari, and comes after his occasion’s abject defeat in Kaliganj meeting bypoll. Kaliganj is a Muslim-majority constituency in Nadia. BJP was the one occasion that noticed its vote share dip (from 31% in 2021 to twenty-eight.2% now), prompting TMC to emphasize how BJP had failed to carry on to even its majority neighborhood votes. It stays to be seen whether or not Bhattacharya’s occasion colleagues sustain their anti-Muslim pitch whilst he takes a conciliatory method, which might point out the occasion has hit on a very good cop-bad cop technique with Bengal’s roughly 2.5 crore Muslim voters.“Look at Bengal’s villages. Morchhe Musalman, marchhe Musalman (Muslims are killing and Muslims are dying). Who is responsible for this situation? Those who do not like BJP may not vote for us. But they should accept that 90% of the people killed in the last three years have been Muslims,” he mentioned.“BJP wants visarjan and Muharram processions to walk side by side without any malice against each other. We do not want riots. We want the minority youth to know Bengal through the eyes of Syed Mujtaba Ali and Kazi Nazrul Islam, not terrorists. We want to save Bengal’s plurality,” Bhattacharya mentioned whereas the Bengal BJP management and former Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had been on the dais.
