Overview

• On his first north Bengal tour, Bhattacharya met RSS leaders at Siliguri’s Madhab Bhawan and engaged party units in Alipurduar, Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri ahead of a concluding meeting.
• He accused the Trinamool Congress of underfunding the Uttarkanya secretariat, noting that north Bengal received less than half of its allocated development budget in recent years.
• The BJP has proposed a protest march in Siliguri on July 21 to counter Trinamool’s rally, pending police approval and to be led by BJYM alongside Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari.
• Bhattacharya condemned the expunging of BJP MLA Ashok Lahiri’s speech from Assembly records as an undemocratic move by the ruling party.
• Persistent rifts between Bhattacharya’s moderate outreach and hardline factional leaders deepened after his overture for a grand alliance with CPI(M) and Congress was rejected.