On 11 March, when the Lok Sabha 2024 election season had just kicked off, Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his campaign in West Bengal with the saffron party's 'Vijay Sankalp' rally at Arambagh in Hooghly district. He concluded his campaign, which ran for three months, with a mega roadshow in Kolkata on 29 May. During this period, the prime minister addressed 22 public meetings and conducted one roadshow, his first ever in Kolkata.

However, the high-pitched campaign did not translate to seats in the state – of the 42 Lok Sabha seats, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won just 12 (down from 18 seats in 2019). The saffron party also failed to retain five seats – Cooch Behar, Bankura, Medinipur, Barrackpore, and Jhargram – which the party won in 2019. What the poor performance has led to is an internal crisis, with several state BJP leaders blaming its sub-par performance in the parliamentary polls in the state on "new, inexperienced leaders".

Some are even hinting at a "conspiracy" behind the loss of seats where winning chances were high. BJP's Poor Show in West Bengal: Why Loyalists Are at Loggerheads With Leadership 1. Who's to Blame? Former BJP Bengal president and senior leader Dilip Ghosh , who lost to former cricketer Kriti Azad from the Bardhaman-Durgapur Lok Sabha seat, is among the several loyalists who blamed the central leadership for "giving too much importance to the new entrants from the Trinamool Congress (TMC).

" Ghosh is one of the many prominent leaders .