Bengal Polls 2026: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) recently bagged all nine seats in the Nandigram Cooperative Agricultural Development Committee, while the Trinamool Congress (TMC) did not win any. This is the assembly constituency of West Bengal Leader of the Opposition and BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari, from where he won in the 2021 Assembly polls. Ahead of the West Bengal state elections, the BJP is seeing this as a significant win.
In the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP’s vote share in West Bengal was over 40 per cent, around three per cent less than the TMC. Also, in the 2016 Bengal assembly elections, the BJP’s vote share was around 16 per cent, while it jumped to 38 per cent in 2021. The BJP is seeing SIR as an opportunity to weed out bogus voters and contest a fair election, hoping to stage an upset.
However, experts have some other opinions.
Professor Biswanath Chakraborty, Rabindra Bharati University, said that the SIR is working against the BJP while Mamata Banerjee may gain from it.
“This is a very micro-level result, and one cannot relate it to the general trend. As far as the BJP is concerned, the party still lacks organisation and face-leadership in West Bengal. Also, in the SIR, the BJP is in the backseat. Keeping in view the different problems faced by voters due to the SIR, Mamata Banerjee and her party TMC, are consulting with the voters and raising the issues. This is helping them gain sympathy and positive sentiment. In most areas, they have managed to successfully retain all the voters, including dead voters and infiltrators in the electoral list. The pure voter list that was expected to come out after the SIR is not happening, as the Election Commission has failed to do that. During the SIR process, the TMC has managed to retain the names which were supposed to be dropped,” said Professor Chakraborty.
Professor Sangit Ragi, Delhi University, said that while the BJP has increased its vote share in the Bengal polls, it can defeat TMC, given certain conditions necessary for free and fair polls.
“After the SIR, 58 lakhs votes have been deleted, and this is a known deletion, as they were the fake voters. Again, 1.25 crores voters are in the doubtful list due to their document trail raising suspicion on their citizenship. The Election Commission is trying to locate those people whom we call ghuspethia (infiltrators)….In Bengal, they filled the form and returned it to the polling officers because the local administration was with them; they created the backdate entry and made the documents available to them. Now, these are the documents which are being verified by the Election Commission,” said Professor Ragi.
He further said that if another 25 lakhs or 30 lakhs voters are deleted in Bengal, the scenario will be entirely different.
“There are three elections, one is the 2019 Lok Sabha election, another was the 2024 General elections and in between, there was a Legislative Assembly election in Bengal. If you take all these three elections into account, we come across a very interesting fact which is not less talked about. The BJP had an edge in 143 constituencies as per the Lok Sabha polls of 2019 or 2024. The BJP is gradually narrowing the gap in the Legislative Assembly seats. The gap between the BJP and the Trinamool Congress is not that wide,” said the DU Professor.
Professor Ragi also said that Bengali Hindus can play a crucial role in the BJP’s victory. “The BJP doesn’t get the votes of the Muslims, and even the BJP have this idea that they don’t get votes of Muslims. So, whatever 38% or 41% the BJP is getting, it is the Hindu votes. Now, this is 31% of the total votes. So remember, the Bengalis and Hindus are polarised. And in this election after Bangladesh, there is a greater possibility of polarisation of Hindus in favour of the BJP. Another factor is that the Matua voters and the BJP have tried to expedite their citizenship,” he said.
Experts noted that Hindu voters are scared of the Trinamool Congress because the party uses muscle power and has inherited this political culture from the left and many voters believe that the BJP is a solution to this.
“Since the paramilitary forces are deployed for the Bengal polls, and if they are deployed only during the elections, then that is not going to work. But if they are deployed, the ideal situation would have been for the BJP to get the government dismissed and then go for a fair election in the state after getting imposed President’s Rule….Otherwise, the gun culture and the muscle power will be at play. However, this remains a distant possibility. The BJP should try to send as many paramilitary forces as possible, and all the booths should be managed by the paramilitary forces, rather than the local police. There should be no role for local police in the election at all,” said Professor Ragi.
Bengal will go to the polls around March this year. The contest will be high-stakes given that Mamata Banerjee will look to secure fourth straight term while the BJP looks to get its first Chief Minister in the state.
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