With eyes set on the next assembly polls, the BJP unit of West Bengal on Friday launched a membership drive in the state, and vowed to overthrow the TMC government in the upcoming elections.

Christened ‘Amar Poribar, BJP Poribar’ (My Family, BJP family), the drive was launched here by the party’s state unit chief, Dilip Ghosh in the presence of other members and senior leaders of the saffron camp.

The party introduced a toll-free mobile number, as a part of its membership campaign in the state.

BJP national president J P Nadda, in a video message on the occasion, urged people to join the party and help it defeat the “anti-people” TMC dispensation. He also accused the government of “mishandling” the COVID-19 situation in the state.

“The TMC dispensation is looting the food grains sent by the central government… I would urge all of you to join the BJP and make this membership drive ‘Amar Poribar, BJP Poribar’ a success,” Nadda said.

Criticising the Mamata Banerjee-led organisation for calling the BJP a “party of outsiders”, Ghosh said the TMC had been resorting to such tactics to divert the attention of the people from its “sins”.

“The TMC has called the BJP a party of outsiders. Is Syama Prasad Mukherjee an outsider? Is Sir Asutosh Mookherjee an outsider? Such baseless allegations are made by the TMC to divert attention from its sins. They have failed the people of the state. And these tactics won’t save the party’s ship from sinking,” he said.

The Lok Sabha MP also claimed that several members from other parties have joined the saffron camp in the recent past to put up a fight against the “undemocratic TMC”.

Last year, during the party’s nationwide campaign, nearly one crore people in Bengal had registered for its membership.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has, over the years, made deep inroads in Bengal and successfully positioned itself as the main challenger of the ruling Trinamool Congress, pushing the traditional Congress and Left Front to distant third and fourth positions respectively.

In 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the party bagged 18 out of 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state, four short of the TMC.

The TMC’s tally came down from 34 in 2014 to 22 seats in 2019.

Bengal is scheduled to go to polls in April-May next year.