Kolkata: Barely 12 hours before the polls, BJP’s war room, often described as a “high-tech nerve centre” of the party’s election machinery, looked noisier than ever, with the core unit and a group of strategists busy analysing field reports, pinpointing critical constituencies and making calls to nearly 40,000 booth agents. On Wednesday morning, Bengal will go to polls in the second phase, where BJP is seen as organisationally weaker at the booth level compared to Trinamool. The directions to the booth agents were clear — man every booth till voting ends.On the day of the first phase of polling, Union home minister Amit Shah was present in Bengal, monitoring the functioning, before he left for campaign rallies. Shah went back to Delhi on Monday, along with key strategists and organisers like Bhupendra Yadav, Sunil Bansal and Mangal Pandey. But key state leaders remained stationed at the war room overseeing the micro-level management.Unlike the first phase, which included districts where BJP had dominance in 2021 and 2024, the second phase covers districts like Kolkata, Howrah, South 24 Parganas and Purba Bardhaman, which are considered Trinamool strongholds.In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the party emerged as a prime challenger to Trinamool, securing lead in 37 seats in the seven districts covered in the second phase this time. In the 2021 assembly polls, the number of seats won by BJP in the seven districts reduced to 18. In 2024, the party managed to secure a lead in 27 of the 142 seats. It was 34 lakh votes behind Trinamool in six of the seven districts covered under the second phase. BJP was able to secure a lead of 1.3 lakh only in Nadia.Five months ago, BJP planned deployment of a crack team in six political zones of Bengal. The party focused more on organising ground-level workers, Panna Pramukh (taking care of 50-60 votes) and Shakti Kendras (a cluster of five-seven booths). In 2021, hundreds of booths in south Bengal remained without agents. Many of them faced forceful prevention or were targeted in clashes. Shah has toured the state 15 times to energise the organisation at the grassroots level and hold strategic meetings with booth-level workers.Learning a lesson from 2021, BJP is focusing on manning every booth this time. On Tuesday, the team inside the war room made “smart calls” to each of the 40,000 booth agents. “Each of them will receive calls tonight and again at 5 am on Wednesday. They will be GPS-tracked and we will instantly get to know if they are in any trouble,” said a Bengal BJP functionary.On Wednesday morning, the war room will coordinate with Shakti Kendras to streamline command between the state leadership and the grassroots. They will also keep tabs on “focused booths” where the contest is tight. They will also use “heat maps” and historical trends to pinpoint critical constituencies.
