With less than a year left for the Bengal Assembly elections, all political parties are busy preparing for the upcoming polls. For the first time in the state, the state BJP has formed a new committee called the “High Rise Committee” to focus on residents of high-rise buildings in Kolkata and its suburbs.
According to a senior BJP leader, “This committee’s core team will have 7-8 members who will be mainly responsible for the planning and execution. Others will also be involved. The Yuva of our party will also be included in this team.”
BJP sources said high-rises are mainly concentrated in Kolkata, its suburbs, and Durgapur, and these will be the areas of focus for votes. The committee will assign leaders to specific constituencies within the city that have high-rises, with the main aim of ensuring residents of these complexes come out and vote.
A senior party leader said the BJP has already conducted a survey for the 2026 Assembly elections, which found “a lot of anti-ruling party sentiment among the affluent and upper middle class in these high-rises.” For the BJP, this represents a potential vote bank. However, the problem, the leader said, is that while these residents are not supporters of the ruling party, they often do not turn up to vote. The committee has been formed to change that.
Such a committee currently exists only in Mumbai. In Bengal, it was formed after analysing class structure, socio-economic conditions, and demography. A senior BJP leader said “We are focusing on every strata of society this time. We are leaving no stone unturned — every vote counts. The affluent do not come out to vote; we will reach out to them and encourage them to vote.”
BJP sources said only party leaders who regularly visit well-known or landmark high-rise buildings in the city will be part of the committee.
According to a top Bengal BJP leader: “There is now a proliferation of high-rise housing in Kolkata and the adjacent New Town. However, a section of the residents there are apathetic to politics. Another section believes that it is possible to build a new India by following the path shown by Narendra Modi. The number of Trinamool, Congress or Left supporters is very low in those high-rises. We have got all this information from various surveys. That is why we have paid special attention to the high-rises before the assembly elections.”
The BJP said its focus sharpened after reviewing the 2021 Assembly election results. Booth-wise analysis showed most voters living in Kolkata’s high-rises did not go to the polls. The party claims that had they voted, the results could have been different in constituencies such as Rash Behari, Tollygunge, Jadavpur, Rajarhat-Gopalpur, and Rajarhat-New Town.
According to a BJP insider: “The members of this committee will start communicating with the residents of Kolkata’s high-rise buildings on a regular basis. Our only aim is to get the residents of high-rises to the booths on election day. We have seen that many residents do not wish to leave the AC flats and stand in queues, but we will be appealing to them and making them realise the importance of their vote.”
With the elections approaching, several other committees are also being formed to reach out to people of different professions in the city. A party leader described the main job of a political party as building close relationships with all sections of society.
