The party has decided to hire Jarvis Technology & Strategy Consulting Private Limited for the purpose.

Bengal BJP: Ever since Prashant Kishor and Citizens for Accountable Governance (CAG), an election-campaign group he conceptualized, helped the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) win an absolute majority in the 2014 Lok Sabha Elections, there has been a trend of sorts of hiring election strategists by various political parties to help and guide them in winning elections at different levels, the highest being Lok Sabha Election.

Now it has been reported that the West Bengal unit of the BJP has decided to hire the services of a private agency for implementing its “back-office strategy” in the state for the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections tentatively scheduled to be held in March-April 2024.

The party has decided to hire Jarvis Technology & Strategy Consulting Private Limited for the purpose, according to sources in the BJP state committee.

The move is perceived to be a counter to Mamata Banerjee’s ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) hiring the services of the Prashant Kishor-founded Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC) for electoral benefits since the 2021 Assembly elections of West Bengal.

“There will be no conflict in the functioning of the state unit of the BJP and the private agency. While political campaigns and ground-level outreach programmes will be carried out by the state leadership of the party as per the guidelines of the central leadership, the work of the outsourced agency will be to do on-ground and backup research and give fillers to the state leadership, so that political strategies can be put in place accordingly,” said a state committee member of the BJP.

Sukanta Majumdar, the state BJP President has neither denied nor confirmed the development and averred that election strategies are “internal and confidential matters” that cannot often be disclosed.

Meanwhile, party insiders said that as per initial plans, the consulting agency will operate not only from Kolkata but will set up camp offices in different districts of the state as well.

West Bengal Legislative Assembly has 294 constituencies. In the elections held in 2021, the TMC emerged victorious as it grabbed 215 seats while the BJP came a distant second with 77 seats.

West Bengal sends 42 Lok Sabha members to the parliament and in the previous general elections held in 2019, the BJP gave a tough fight to the TMC as it won 18 seats whereas the latter got 22 seats.