Dilip Ghosh re-enters BJP's Bengal calculus, signals a longer, matured innings

Kolkata: Winter mornings at Eco Park are crowded again, phones at Dilip Ghosh’s New Town residence rarely fall silent, and a once-quiet household is again struggling to contain the surge of followers, a telling marker of the former Bengal BJP president’s return to relevance.

In the Bengal BJP's inner circles, the renewed bustle around Dilip Ghosh has revived a familiar assessment, now tempered by experience: the former state president may be preparing not for a brief cameo, but for a longer and matured political innings.

For much of the past few years, Ghosh had existed in a curious political limbo. He never left the party. The BJP-allotted car and driver remained. Security cover from the Union Home Ministry continued. Yet, he was conspicuously absent from official programmes, missing from the Prime Minister's rallies in Bengal and largely sidelined in the state unit's choreography.

The official line was carefully ambiguous. "Dilip Ghosh is a central leader; decisions about him will be taken by the central leadership," state leaders would say.

Ghosh himself stuck to a stoic refrain: "I am still in the party. I haven't gone anywhere." 

That distinction between remaining in the party and being politically active blurred decisively from December 31, when Ghosh attended a meeting of Amit Shah, considered the BJP's chief poll strategist.

Party insiders trace the shift to Ghosh's invitation to the meeting - conveyed by central observer Sunil Bansal.

For the battle-hardened organiser who once rebuilt the BJP's grassroots network in West Bengal from near irrelevance, the signal was unmistakable: the waiting phase was over.

The ripple effect was swift. Phones that had fallen silent began ringing again. Followers who had drifted into passivity resurfaced. Visitors returned first in trickles, then in crowds.

"Between 2016 and 2021, BJP workers in Bengal were charged like never before," recalled a former state vice-president. "After the post-poll violence of 2021, many lost momentum. When Dilip-da was removed as state president, a section lost heart. His reactivation has re-energised that base."

 Often dubbed the BJP's most successful state president in West Bengal, Ghosh presided over the party's rise from three Assembly seats in 2016 to 77 in 2021, while steering it to 18 Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 general elections.

The revival is now logistical. Despite holding no formal organisational post, Ghosh spends several hours daily at the party office, meeting workers from districts across the state.

The rush has grown so heavy that visitors are being redirected from his New Town home to the Bidhannagar BJP office, where a room opposite the state president's chamber has been earmarked for him. Garlands pile up. District organisers wait for brief audiences.

Inside the party, speculation over the political logic of his renewed prominence is intense.

One view sees it as a tactical move, activating the 61-year-old as a winnable Assembly candidate ahead of the 2026 polls. Another reads it more strategically: a calibrated attempt to soften the one-leader narrative around Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari.

Both are mass leaders. Both are proven vote-getters. And both have long occupied overlapping political space.

Ghosh's distancing from the state leadership sharpened after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, when he criticised organisational decisions taken under his successor Sukanta Majumdar.

Shifted from Medinipur to Bardhaman-Durgapur, he lost both Lost Sabha seats, which the BJP conceded to the TMC. Ghosh publicly blamed "back-biting" and questioned campaign management.

Tension sharpened further after Ghosh, a former RSS pracharak, and his newly wedded wife attended the inauguration of the Jagannath temple at Digha in April last year. In the event the BJP had officially boycotted, he was seen in an informal exchange with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

The gesture drew criticism from state BJP leaders.

From that point, insiders say, Ghosh's political "TRP" dipped. The Eco Park walks thinned. Calls slowed to a trickle. That lull has now ended.

Publicly, BJP leaders are treading carefully.

State president Samik Bhattacharya said, "He has been drawing up the blueprint so far. Now he will play across the entire field." Adhikari himself has remained publicly restrained.

Recent photographs from a north Kolkata religious function, showing Ghosh at ease with leaders from different camps, were read by some as a message of party harmony.

"This Dilip is more mature than before," a BJP leader said. "He is thinking long-term." For a party still grappling with organisational fatigue and the aftershocks of 2021 poll defeat, that maturity could prove consequential.

Before Adhikari's induction from the TMC, it was Ghosh alone whose name reliably drew crowds across districts.

"Dilip-da is an asset," said a senior leader. "When he appeared marginalised, workers felt demoralised. His re-emergence will activate them again." Whether this renewed visibility translates into a formal role or a recalibrated power balance remains unclear.

For now, the central leadership appears content to let the optics do the talking -- the visitors, the calls, the crowded office room.

In Bengal's BJP circles, the subtext is harder to miss. Ghosh's return is not about nostalgia, but leverage -- reviving a dormant cadre, diluting over-centralisation and restoring a second mass pivot ahead of a bruising election year.

This time, he appears to be back to bat for long, not fill space.