Mamata Banerjee, the septuagenarian generalissima of the ruling Trinamool Congress, delivered her fiery final flourish for Bengal 2026 with a march through
Jadavpur.
The Bengal chief minister led over 100 political programmes in 42 days since her March 16 rally at Dorina Crossing.
On May 30, 2024, she had wrapped up her campaign for the Lok Sabha election with a 12km march across vast swathes of south Calcutta, defying doctors’ advice. Almost two years or 697 days later, she covered the same distance on Monday for the Bengal Assembly election.
Her nephew and party MP Abhishek Banerjee had pegged the Bengal polls as India’s very own Battle of Stalingrad, where the three-term-incumbent chief minister stood alone against the saffron “fascist army” of the Centre and 19 NDA-ruled states, the allegedly compromised Election Commission of India, all key central agencies, close to 2.5 lakh central forces, among others. Mamata did not disappoint, moving heaven and earth for this election.
“She held 60 programmes for the 142-seat Phase II alone. Abhishek, who is 38, did 41 for the second phase, though he had other, behind-the-scenes responsibilities.... It is primarily her firepower that sees us through” said a Trinamool veteran. “Together, despite all the brouhaha, (Prime Minister) Narendra Modi and (Union home minister) Amit Shah did 19 for this phase.”
Mamata’s campaign evolved gradually over these seven weeks. This was because her foremost intent crystallised: first, to establish the core narrative of this election as a plebiscite for Bengal and Bengalis against the contentious special intensive revision (SIR), and then, to ensure that the Trinamool’s election and counting management machinery does not falter during the crucial stages of polling and counting on or around April 23, 29, and May 4.
A party veteran highlighted the broad contours of this evolution.
“The initial, sole focus was on the SIR, its dubious ‘logical discrepancies’ phase, the so-called “under adjudication” phase, the developments related to the exclusionary, opaque exercise before the Supreme Court, Nirvachan Sadan’s criminally compromised role, (chief election commissioner) Gyanesh Kumar’s malefaction as Amit Shah’s political stooge, the 91 lakh deletions, the lakhs of central forces, the countless transfers and the administrative overhaul by the EC, the “detect-delete-deport” scare...,” he said.
Along with these, he said, was the long list of the Trinamool government’s social welfare schemes and other benefits that positively impacted nearly every family in Bengal, and how all those benefits could disappear if the BJP came to power. There were also regular references to the “saffron interference” with personal choices in states where it is in power, besides the Hindutva brigade’s “Bengali-phobia” leading to the “persecution” of Bengali migrants in other states.
“But the main narrative was the SIR, which helps shove everything else under the carpet...,” he added. “Recently, she got down to the brass tacks of concerns over the sanctity of the voting.... From slow-voting to slow-counting, deliberate power-cuts to people in blankets and masks swapping EVMs and planting chips in EVMs and polling booths being made inaccessible to Trinamool agents to the attacks on (Trinamool’s consulting firm) I-PAC, harassment of the party’s vote-management and counting machinery and criticism of opinion and exit polls that gave us a clear edge in the contest....”
A youth in the backroom, a crucial cog in the data-crunching apparatus that forms the backbone of Trinamool’s electoral war room, listed three other dimensions.
“There is an anxiety over how all of them (the EC and the saffron ecosystem) might work together on counting day to show till very late that the BJP is ahead so that the Trinamool machinery gives up and leaves, making room for counting malpractices thereafter to ensure a saffron win,” he said.
“She (Mamata) also stressed she needs a two-thirds majority (196 in the 294-seat House) to eliminate any Operation Lotus threat, and that Trinamool has won 130-odd in the 152 seats that polled on April 23,” he added. “In the final lap, she has devoted significant time and effort to her own constituency (Bhabanipur), as well as seats in and around Calcutta....”
He said there were 109 make-or-break seats out of 142 for Mamata in phase two. “She gave this election her all, a truly Herculean performance for a frail, 71-year-old.”