The West Bengal Assembly elections, to be held in two phases on April 23 and 29, are shaping up to be a two-party race between the incumbent All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The Left and the Congress were sidelined in an intense struggle. The Bharatiya Gorkha Prajatantrik Morcha (BGPM) is contesting three Darjeeling hill seats as an ally of the TMC. The TMC, which has been in power for three terms, replaced 74 members of the legislature to ward off anti-incumbency and bring new faces into the field. In 2021, the TMC won 215 seats with a 48.02% vote share, while the BJP secured 77 seats with 38%, a sharp increase from just three seats and a 10.2% vote share in 2016. Chief Minister and TMC leader Mamata Banerjee, BJP where she is the Leader of Opposition BJP, from Adhabani Suvendu sitting MLA. In 2021, she lost to Mr. Adhikari in Nandigram by a margin of 1,956 votes, though the TMC won yet another term. The run-up to the 2026 elections has been marred by controversies surrounding the Special Intensive Review (SIR) of the electoral roll. The final electoral roll of West Bengal, released on February 28, saw the number of voters drop from 7.66 million to 7.04 million, with more than 62 million names deleted. An additional 60,000,000 names remain pending even as the campaign continues, creating unprecedented uncertainty.
The stalemate over SIR has overshadowed other debates. After being in power for three terms, the TMC has a lot to answer for, but the SIR turned out to be a gift for Ms Banerjee, which she used to bolster her accusations against the BJP that it is a party hostile to West Bengal and its voters. The BJP started 2026 with a reasonable case in its favor – the 2024 rape and murder of a practicing doctor in Calcutta shook public confidence in the Mamata government. But the party’s limitations — and even refusal — to negotiate India’s cultural and linguistic diversity are starkly visible in the state, and it is pinning its hopes on a truncated voter list and the controllability of the electoral process. His state unit is divided, while the TMC appears to have consolidated further, with Ms Banerjee and her nephew Abhishek firmly in command. BJP’s upward trajectory may have hit a ceiling. Congress is competing without any alliances. The Left is not a power candidate, but its vote share in the selected seats could affect the margins in a close fight. There may be some surprises in store in West Bengal in the long campaign period as both BJP and TMC are fighting a battle for survival.
Published – 24 March 2026 0:20 AM IST
