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Kolkata, Nov 14 (IANS) The BJP central high command has advised the state leadership to be extremely selective in recommending names of celebrities, especially the silver screen, as party candidates for the state assembly elections next year.
A BJP state committee member said the central leadership has advised state leaders to consider three factors before recommending the name of a celebrity as a candidate for the assembly elections next year.
The state committee member said, “The first factor is how deeply the proposed celebrity candidates are ingrained in the core political ideology of the BJP. The second is how aware such candidates are of the basic social and geographical structure of the assembly constituencies from where their candidature will be proposed. The third and final factor is how connected such celebrity candidates will be to the organizational affairs of the party, irrespective of the results.”
It is learned that the selective decision about fielding celebrity candidates has been taken due to the failure of the experiment in this regard in the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections.
In 2021, the BJP fielded several celebrity candidates from the world of silver screen. But except fashion designer-turned-politician Agnimitra Paul and actor-turned-politician Hiran Chatterjee, all the other celebrity candidates lost.
The party’s state committee member said, “The leadership recognizes that victory and defeat are part of any election process. But what was really disturbing was that these defeated celebrity candidates completely distanced themselves from the party as soon as the results of the 2021 assembly elections were declared, with many of them joining the Trinamool Congress within days of the results. Therefore, this time our central leadership wants to be extremely selective about fielding celebrity candidates.”
He said that during the last few days, central leaders of the party like BL Santosh and Bhupendra Yadav held several rounds of meetings with state leaders on the strategy for the 2026 assembly elections and during those meetings, warnings were issued by central leaders about recommending celebrity names as candidates.
–IANS
Source/DPB