On the stage, PM took blessings of Shri Makhanlal Sarkar, one of the most senior workers of BJP in West Bengal. At the age of 98, Shri Makhanlal Sarkar remains one of the early grassroots figures associated with the nationalist movement in post-Independence India. In 1952, he was arrested in Kashmir while accompanying Syama Prasad Mukherjee during the movement to hoist the Indian tricolour there. After the formation of the BJP in 1980, he became the organisational coordinator for West Dinajpur,