Kolkata/Hyderabad: At a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi set a target of 370 seats for his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, the party is working out a plan to woo female voters in major states. West Bengal, which comprises 968 female voters for every 1,000 males, clocking the best-ever voters' gender ratio, features on the BJP's poll agenda to reach the milestone.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday met the women victims of sexual assault in Sandeshkhali village of West Bengal, sources said. "They put forward their ordeal and the Prime Minister heard them patiently like a father figure. The victims were very emotional with the fact that the Prime Minister understood their pain," sources added.
BJP MP Locket Chatterjee said, "...Prime Minister Modi will not rest till the women in Sandeshkhali get justice. Women coming to today's meeting were stopped."
"This is an insult to them. (West Bengal) Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee couldn't protect the women but is giving protection to Sheikh Shahjahan," Locket was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.
Earlier on Wednesday, PM Modi said, "Under TMC, women of this pious land have been violated. The events of Sandeshkhali would make anyone feel ashamed but the TMC govt does not care about your struggles." He continued, "TMC govt is hell-bent on saving the perpetrator. Their acts were first condemned by the High Court and then the Supreme Court as well. Leaders of TMC are torturing the women of poor, Dalit, and Adivasis groups. The TMC government trusts its leaders more than it trusts the women of Bengal."
On meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Sandeshkhali victim said, "Thanking Prime Minister Modi, we told him openly about the atrocities being committed on every person. We told the Prime Minister how we were tortured. He assured us of help."
"We voted the Chief Minister to victory but she insulted us. She did not even talk to us. We felt very good after talking to Prime Minister Modi. We requested him to deploy the Central Force here because we have no faith in the state government," the victim was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.
The rise in female voters is significant, compared to that of 2019 when it had 949. Since then, too, it is steadily rising. Significantly, Trinamool Congress also banked highly on 'Mahila' and 'Muslims' to negate the BJP, largely seen as a Hindi heartland party, any chance to make a dent in the bastion of Mamata Banerjee who is very popular among women voters in West Bengal.
Now, Sandeshkhali, a constituency that has made a major contribution to the Trinamool Congress’s (TMC) electoral success in West Bengal, during the 2021 Assembly polls, has become a pivot of the BJP’s electoral push.
Especially, at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi eyes returning to power for a third straight term this year, Sandeshkhali, the home to Trinamool strongman Sheikh Shajahan with a sizable women voters, hogs the limelight.
With the stakes high in the key battleground, Shajahan's alleged involvement in atrocities on women has become a major poll issue that the BJP wants to cash in on.
Taking on the Mamata Banerjee government in West Bengal over the Sandeshkhali issue ahead of Lok Sabha polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi last Friday said that the country is enraged over the treatment of the women in Sandeshkhali by the TMC government.
"The country is seeing what TMC has done with the sisters of Sandeshkhali. The whole country is enraged. The soul of Raja Ram Mohan Roy (social reformer) must have been pained by what happened in Sandeshkhali," he said. Without mentioning the name of TMC leader Sheikh Shahjahan, who has been accused of sexually assaulting and land grabbing by women in Sandeshkhali, PM said, "A TMC leader crossed all limits...The BJP leaders in the state fought for the respect and dignity of the women here. Yesterday, the police had to arrest him (TMC leader Sheikh Shahjahan)."
The Sandeshkhali incident provided an opportunity for the BJP to target the TMC and Mamata Banerjee where it hurts her most by making a dent in the party’s women support base.
At the same time, the TMC is also desperate to stop the BJP on its tracks and prevent it from repeating the 2019 Lok Sabha performance when it won a record 18 parliamentary seats from the state.
On Wednesday, the BJP workers, who constituted mostly women left in droves from Sandeshkhali to attend Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meeting at Barasat Several women supporters of the party from Sandeshkhali were seen making their way to the rally venue to listen to the Prime Minister.
These women marched in groups from Sandeshkhali to Dhamakhali across the Sandeshkhali ghat to attend PM Narendra Modi's public meeting in Barasat.
One of the women who was marching to Barasat said, "All our respect is gone and the way we got tortured we are going to say all this to our Prime Minister Narendra Modi and we wish to have Modi Ji by our side and help us."
Another woman from Sandeshkhali said that they wanted to urge PM Modi to allow them to cast their vote without fear. "We are going to PM Modi to urge him to ensure that we can cast our vote, justice for atrocities against women and peace," she said.
These women who are making their way to attend PM Modi's rally said that they just want to live in peace and escape the tyranny of some politicians. "We want to live in peace. People like Shibu Hazra, Sheikh Shahjahan and Uttam Sardar should not come back. We can cast our votes ourselves," a woman said.
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