A BJP supporter enforcing the bandh at the mouth of Rajarhat New Town. (Aranya Sen)

Nov. 30: The scale of street hooliganism during today’s BJP-sponsored bandh left Bengal stunned amid indications that the unexpected violence stemmed from the ambitions and rivalries of central and state party leaders.

Bandh-enforcers armed with sticks and rods torched three buses, attacked cars, snatched drivers’ keys and blocked traffic to Calcutta’s IT hub and airport as the Left government, true to its form during recent bandhs, stayed a spectator. (See Metro)

A senior official said the police presence on Calcutta’s streets was less than even the 2,000-odd personnel deployed for the November 24 SUCI bandh — probably the government counted on the BJP having never been a major force in Bengal.

Sources, however, suggested the violence had little to do with the official reason for the bandh — price rise — over which the BJP is agitating nation-wide. It was the result, they said, of the efforts of outgoing BJP national president Rajnath Singh, and new state party chief Rahul Sinha, to impress the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

Rajnath is eyeing the job of the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha or a similar post and wants to show he and his handpicked Bengal chief can project an “assertive” BJP in a state where it has never wielded much influence.

Rajnath today appeared to condone the violence, telling The Telegraph: “It was a spontaneous reaction to extreme poverty. The display of fury is understandable.”

Sinha, entangled in a faction fight since being installed on November 6 after the Sangh got Satyabrata (Julu) Mukherjee removed, wanted “to hog the headlines by enforcing the bandh”, state BJP sources said.

Sinha is close to the Sangh, whose officials acknowledged that he had got many swayamsevaks on the streets today, especially in Nadia, Malda and other north Bengal districts.

So, even though the BJP’s November 20 bandh on the same issue in Delhi, where it has been traditionally powerful, went off peacefully, in Bengal it spawned violence in Calcutta, other areas of south Bengal and parts of north Bengal.

In Delhi, the BJP had called a partial bandh, asking shops and commercial establishments to shut but exempting transport, banks, schools, colleges and eateries. Sinha, however, urged the central leaders to allow him to call a total bandh in Bengal.

A party functionary in Delhi said that Rajnath readily agreed, saying state units should be free to decide their strategy on public agitations, despite some leaders’ view that the party should not be seen as overly destructive.

Last week, Rajnath asked Rajya Sabha MP Prakash Javdekar to monitor the bandh preparations in Bengal. Local leaders were assigned charge of the various zones and Bihar Lok Sabha member Shahnawaz Hussain was told to come to Bengal yesterday to ensure the script was followed.

Rajnath stayed in touch with the district supervisors in Bengal over the phone to monitor the bandh’s progress, especially in north Bengal.

The violence, however, brought out the factionalism in the state unit. Sinha’s rival and Bengal BJP vice-president Sabyasachi Bagchi slammed the “ferocity” of the violence and said the party’s central leaders should condemn it. He blamed the hooliganism on the “outsiders” the state president had allegedly deployed in Calcutta and Howrah.

Sinha denied this, saying “our party workers” were on the streets to “make the bandh a success”.

Bagchi’s allegation, however, received support from Mamata Banerjee who claimed the BJP had “brought in CPM cadres to unleash violence” during the bandh. “The CPM and the BJP have been working together in the state since the Lok Sabha elections,” she alleged.

Some BJP leaders agreed that the hooligans were CPM cadres but claimed it was a Left ploy “to discredit our party”. One leader said: “There was violence even in Behrampore (Murshidabad) where the BJP has hardly any base.”

BJP sources said Sinha was at war with Bagchi and other key officials like general secretary Malay Majumdar. Bagchi, Majumdar and some others today wrote to central BJP leaders complaining about Sinha’s “unethical tactics” in enforcing the bandh.

“Rahul camped for two days at the party’s central Calcutta office to work out the strategy of deploying RSS cadres in consultation with general secretary (organisation) Amal Chatterjee, also a key RSS man,” a BJP source said.