Crowd size at Modi's Kol rally was lesser than estimated: Varun Gandhi

, Feb 7: BJP general secretary

, who is also in charge of West Bengal for the upcoming Lok Sabha election, has said that that the size of the crowd which had attended party's prime ministerial candidate

's election

in Kolkata on Wednesday was a fourth of what the party had claimed and that the meeting was just about "okay", a

said.

When asked about the 'huge turnout' that BJP leaders claimed, Varun Gandhi said the claims that over 2 lakh people turned up at the rally was not right. "Th crowd was at the most 45,000 to 50,000," the news report qyoted him as saying.

The state leadership said over 2 lakh people came, which Varun disagreed with

The state BJP leadership was impressed with the crowd, given the fact that West Bengal hasn't been a stronghold of the BJP, and it estimated the crowd size between 3 lakh to 8 lakh. Some even said that over 50,000 people had been prevented by supporters of the ruling Trinamool Congress from attending the rally.

Varun Gandhi, however, refused to comment on what Modi and BJP president Rajnath Singh had said at the rally. The West Bengal BJP leadership is reportedly disappointed with the two top leaders' going soft on the Mamata Banerjee government in the state.

OneIndia News