Armoured vehicles roll through the streets. An unprecedented 2,407 companies of central forces have been deployed. Heads of all Central Armed Police Forces held a meeting — never before convened in Calcutta — in a hall packed with uniformed men. And SIR-scarred voters stand in long queues before appellate tribunals, submitting documents to reclaim their right to vote.
This is not a conflict zone. This is Bengal, on the eve of electing its 18th Assembly across two phases — on Thursday and on April 29.
What makes these visuals extraordinary is that they belong exclusively to Bengal, even as the Election Commission of India conducts polls across 824 constituencies in four states and a Union Territory between April 9 and 29. The entire country is watching. The contest for 294 seats has been sharpened by the deletion of over 90 lakh voters through the ECI’s controversial special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
Politically, there is a sense of déjà vu. Five years ago, Bengal witnessed a similar crossing of swords between Mamata Banerjee and her challenger-in-chief, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Voters then ignored the BJP’s “Aab ki baar 200 paar” campaign; the party ended up with 77 seats in 2021, despite registering an impressive 38.1 per cent vote share. Much of that was owed to the collapse of the Left-Congress combine, whose vote share fell from 29.91 per cent in 2016 to 9.86 per cent in 2021. Trinamool, by contrast, polled 47.94 per cent — a margin of 58,84,710 votes over the BJP in absolute terms.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP stumbled again. From 18 MPs in 2019, the party fell to 12. As the BJP’s parliamentary strength slumped both in Bengal and nationally, Trinamool grew in stature, emerging as India’s principal Opposition force with 29 Lok Sabha MPs.
The BJP found its only consolation in the arithmetic: it had led Trinamool in 90 Assembly segments in 2024 — more than the number of MLAs it actually held in 2021, several of whom had since defected to the ruling party.
This time, the BJP has returned with a sharper edge. But does the Modi-Amit Shah combine have what it takes to crack the coalition Mamata has built through social engineering, welfare politics and administrative reach?
Even the Opposition acknowledges the depth of that coalition. Through schemes like Lakshmir Bhandar, Swasthya Sathi, Kanyashree and Rupashree — and initiatives like Duare Sarkar — Mamata has cultivated a vast beneficiary base, with women at its core. That trust has proven remarkably durable. The BJP’s counter-narrative — that Bengal has been denied central schemes like Ayushman Bharat, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana and the Smart City Mission due to Trinamool’s vendetta politics — failed to gain traction even in 2024.
That same political capital has shielded Mamata from multiple corruption scandals, the public outrage over the rape and murder of a junior doctor at the state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, and persistent criticism over the state’s industrial stagnation, closure of over 8,000 government schools and the scourge of unemployment.
Into this charged atmosphere, the SIR has landed like a lit match. What was once a routine democratic exercise — the revision of electoral rolls, held every five years — has become the election’s defining fault line. Political leaders and pundits alike believe the SIR will determine the final winner; Trinamool, Left, and the Congress are now ranged against the Election Commission itself, accusing the constitutional authority of acting at the BJP’s behest.
The deletion of over 90 lakh voters has handed Mamata a double weapon: the victim card and the protector’s mantle. The BJP, in turn, has leaned into polarisation — with Modi and Amit Shah returning repeatedly to “illegal infiltrators”, “Rohingyas” and the Uniform Civil Code to consolidate Hindu votes.
For Mamata, the SIR’s timing could not have been more fortunate. A significant section of minorities had grown disenchanted with Trinamool — over its stance on the Waqf issue, the OBC quota case, and state spending on Hindu temples. But with large-scale voter deletions now a reality, many Muslims have recalibrated: defeating the BJP is the priority, and most see Mamata as their best instrument. The Left and the Congress, in certain pockets, will also harvest anti-SIR sentiment — but whether they can break the Trinamool-BJP binary is another question entirely.
In 2021, both parties were wiped out. For the first time since 1952, the Left held no MLA in Bengal. Polarisation had driven Left votes towards the BJP. That slide tracked the BJP’s rise through the 2019 cycle: the Left’s 7.46 per cent vote share yielded no MPs; the Congress, with 5.61 per cent, managed two. Trinamool won 22 seats, the BJP 18. The binary was etched. Subsequent elections only deepened the Left’s marginalisation.
To stage a recovery now, the Left must do three things at once: win back voters lost to the BJP, attract minorities alienated from Trinamool, and pull in women voters. The CPM’s large rallies in minority-dominated constituencies — Domkal, Karandighi, Khargram, Jalangi — are generating attention. Whether the crowds convert into votes is the harder question.
The Congress, meanwhile, is banking on legacy strongholds: Malda, where the Ghani Khan Chowdhury name still carries weight, and Murshidabad, where Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury heads the party’s Behrampore charge.
In electoral terms, however, the BJP remains Trinamool’s principal challenger.
Emboldened by its victories in Odisha and Bihar, the party senses a window. Three factors feed that confidence: an RSS more deeply mobilised than in 2021; an Election Commission that has ensured heavy central force deployment to level the playing field; and a post-SIR electoral roll where deletions in several Assembly segments exceed the margins by which the BJP trailed Trinamool in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
The BJP had already begun course-correcting in 2022. Sunil Bansal — credited with the party’s dominance in Uttar Pradesh since 2014 — was tasked with Bengal. Three years on, the party installed Samik Bhattacharya as state president, a concession to Trinamool’s “bohiragoto (outsider)” attack. Yet political compulsion keeps the BJP reliant on outside campaigners — and Trinamool has turned the “infiltrator” framing back on them, pointing to the BJP’s roster of non-Bengali faces.
That dependence on outsiders, despite an active RSS presence on the ground, remains the party’s structural anxiety. Central forces can ensure orderly voting. They cannot substitute for a grassroots organisation capable of protecting booths and turning out voters.
The BJP may dream of Bengal. Whether it has the machinery to make that dream real will be put to the test starting on Thursday.
For Mamata, the question is whether she can, once again, bring the BJP’s chariot to a halt — and hold the line for a Bengal she insists is being threatened with a “soul-altering” transformation.