The BJP started its operation within the state from the grassroots level of governance, particularly the panchayat politics. The party also used various cultural icons in the state, including Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Swami Vivekananda in its election campaigns.[10]
The Bharatiya Janata Party contested the West Bengal assembly election for the first time in 1982.[11] The primary objective of the party was to create a nucleus for a future third force in West Bengal politics.[11] The party supported the call of the West Bengal government to hold the elections in March 1982.[12] The party contested on 52 assembly constituencies and got around 129,994 votes in the state.
The Bharatiya Janata Party fielded 291 candidates across the state in 1991 Vidhan Sabha election, and managed to increase its share of votes from 0.51% in 1987 to 11.34% (3,513,121 votes).[16][11] This was the first time BJP fielded such a large number of candidates in West Bengal assembly elections.[11] The party also fielded 42 candidates for the 1991 Lok Sabha election which took place simultaneously with the Vidhan Sabha election. The BJP got 3624974 (11.66%) votes in this election. Rather than focusing primarily on the Ayodhya issue, which was highlighted in the BJP campaigns across the country, the West Bengal BJP campaign concentrated on agitations against immigration from Bangladesh.[17] The campaign sought to invoke Bengali memories of Partition.[17] While support for BJP increased among Bengali communities, its main stronghold in the state remained non-Bengali populations in Calcutta (Marwaris and Gujaratis).[17] Besides this, the party was able to mobilize the rural voters who were not benefitted from Left government’s land reforms.[10]
In 1996, both Assembly election and Lok Sabha election took place simultaneously, the party contested on 292 assembly constituencies and got 2,372,480 (6.45%) votes[18] and contested 42 Lok Sabha seats and got 2525864 (6.88%) votes across the state.[19]
In the 2006 Assembly election, BJP entered into an alliance with the All India Trinamool Congress and contested on 29 constituencies. The BJP got 760236 (1.93%) votes throughout West Bengal and 19.89% on seats it contested.[27]
In 2014 Indian general election the BJP won only 2 seats. BJP candidates for the first time, returned runner-up in 3 seats and got 17.2% vote share throughout the state. This performance was better than BJP's previous best of 11.66% in 1991 elections. However the All India Trinamool Congress dominated the election winning 34 seats.[30]
In 2016 Assembly election the BJP in an alliance with GJM contested 291 seats and got 5,555,134 (10.16%) votes and created history by winning 3 assembly seats for the first time.[31]
There was a major political shift from the left to the right in the 2019 Lok Sabha election in West Bengal. The Bharatiya Janata Party, won 18 Lok Sabha seats out of the 42 constituencies with 23,028,343 (40.25%) votes. On 24 May 2019, The Statesman reported that BJP had made CPI-M a marginalised party and setting a strong challenge to the ruling Trinamool Congress.[32] The shift in the voting pattern was seen across the state.[33]
After the election the Government of India passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) in the Parliament, allowing a quicker route to citizenship to non Muslim immigrants from neighbouring countries. The party hoped to benefit from the votes of the Hindu immigrants from Bangladesh.[34][35]
Post 2020
The BJP's Bengali booklet released in January 2020 claimed that the National Register of Citizens will be implemented to identify any undocumented migrants including Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims and non-Muslims by the Citizenship Amendment Act.[36][37]
The West Bengal BJP has one president, twelve vice-presidents and five general secretaries & twelve secretaries.[38] As of September 2021, the President of the West Bengal state branch of the party is Dr. Sukanta Majumder.
Björn Goldstein (2015) The unconscious Indianization of 'Western' conservatism – is Indian conservatism a universal model?, Global Discourse, 5:1, 44-65, doi:10.1080/23269995.2014.946315
Mathur, Navdeep (2018). "The low politics of higher education: saffron branded neoliberalism and the assault on Indian universities". Critical Policy Studies. 12 (1): 121–125. doi:10.1080/19460171.2017.1403343. S2CID148842457.
McDonnell, Duncan; Cabrera, Luis (2019). "The right-wing populism of India's Bharatiya Janata Party (and why comparativists should care)". Democratization. 26 (3): 484–501. doi:10.1080/13510347.2018.1551885. S2CID149464986.
Özçelik, Ezgi (2019). Right-wing Populist Governments Rhetorical Framing of Economic Inequality: the Cases of BJP in India and AKP in Turkey. Koç University.
Henrik Berglund. "Religion and Nationalism: Politics of BJP." Economic and Political Weekly 39, no. 10 (2004): 1064–70. JSTOR4414737. —Chhibber, Pradeep K. "State Policy, Party Politics, and the Rise of the BJP." In Democracy without Associations: Transformation of the Party System and Social Cleavages in India, 159–76. University of Michigan Press, 1999. JSTOR10.3998/mpub.23136.12.
Malik, Yogendra K.; Singh, V.B. (April 1992). "Bharatiya Janata Party: An Alternative to the Congress (I)?". Asian Survey. 32 (4): 318–336. doi:10.2307/2645149. JSTOR2645149.
Banerjee, Sumanta (22 July 2005). "Civilising the BJP". Economic & Political Weekly. 40 (29): 3116–3119. JSTOR4416896.
Halarnkar, Samar (13 June 2012). "Narendra Modi makes his move". BBC News. The right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India's primary opposition party
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