On the eve of kicking off the membership drive in West Bengal, state BJP president Rahul Sinha said there would be ample use of technology for making new members. “People would need to give a missed call to a toll-free number. Within 10 seconds they would get an SMS on the mobile from which the missed call was made, welcoming him or her to the party. Later they would need to text across their details including name, address and occupation to the toll-free number for verification and enrollment,” he said at a press conference in Siliguri. He also said that after collection of data regarding aspiring members, they would be segregated according to their addresses and then the respective BJP leadership of those places would be used to get the details of those persons who had applied. The enrollment process would be formally inaugurated by All India BJP vice president Dinesh Sharma at the party state headquarters in Kolkata. Taking a dig at Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for defending Mukul Roy and Madan Mitra who are allegedly involved the chit fund scam, Sinha said, “Earlier the CM had said neither she nor her party leaders such as Mukul Roy, Madan Mitra, Kunal Ghosh and Tumpai were thieves. Now that Ghosh is behind bars why was she only defending Mukul and Madan? What about Tumpai (Srinjoy Bose) and herself?” He added that Mamata had said that no one should pay any money to TMC workers if they come asking for money. “Her own party senior leader Sishir Adhikary had spilled the beans that extortion was rampant in the party,” he said.
