A few days before the second round of polling on April 29, a podcast with a clear Left orientation put out a panel discussion on the likely outcome of the West Bengal assembly election. The participants, all of whom were blessed with the infuriating smugness that defines Bengali Left intellectuals, were emphatic that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s challenge to the All India Trinamool Congress was illusory and that Mamata Banerjee would win with a tally of over 200 seats. It was also suggested that the incumbents would retain all the 11 seats of Calcutta; my own challenge to the AITC in Rashbehari was scoffed at as an elite bhadralok delusion that would never withstand the onward march of those whose support base was more subaltern.
It would be unfair to target the Left’s inexplicable sense of intellectual infallibility for special ridicule. Large numbers of analysts dialled a wrong number in West Bengal. While a few may have been driven by the myopic determination of ideology, others internalised the theory peddled by Didi’s admirers that there was an irreconcilable mismatch between Bengali identity and the BJP’s cultural nationalism. Going by this understanding, there was always going to be an electoral glass ceiling that the BJP could never break. To this was added the belief that it would be impossible for any party to win in West Bengal without the support of the Muslim minority that made up nearly one-third of the voting population. In effect, this implied that the Muslims had a permanent veto on the governance of West Bengal.
In the 2021 assembly election, some 50% of West Bengal’s Hindus had voted for the BJP compared to 39% Hindus who had supported Mamata Banerjee. However, given the resounding Muslim support for the AITC, the BJP’s tally did not cross 77 seats. The 2021 outcome contributed immeasurably to fostering the myth that it would be near-impossible to defeat Mamata Banerjee unless, of course, there was a staggering consolidation of the Hindu vote in the state, perhaps on the scale of Gujarat. Indications from exit polls suggest that the 2026 assembly election witnessed 62.2% of the state’s Hindus voting for the BJP (although this figure is indicative, not exact). Therefore, while the popular vote of the BJP rose by 7.69% (from 38.15% in 2021 to 45.84% in 2026), its vote among Hindus rose by 12.2%, a staggering swing that led to the electoral decimation of the AITC.
The Hindu consolidation in favour of the BJP may fuel an impression that the election campaign was communally surcharged. This is erroneous and cannot be backed up by media and other reports from the campaign period. Nearly all BJP candidates were indeed vocal in their pronouncement that there was no way in which they would allow West Bengal to be turned into another Bangladesh. However, this assertion of the Bengali identity being different from the Bangladeshi identity — despite many commonalities — enjoys support on the other side of the Radcliffe Line. Nor did the BJP emphasise that a large number of names deleted by the Special Intensive Revision were Muslims. Indeed, it was the AITC’s decision to make the SIR deletions a major talking point that drove a communal wedge into the campaign. It helped bolster the pre-existing belief among Hindus that infiltration from Bangladesh had altered the state’s demography and that something purposeful needed to be done to rescue India. Coming in the wake of last year’s riots and killings in Murshidabad district and the unending attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh, Mamata Banerjee’s fuss over the SIR helped bring Hindus together. What Didi did to meet the challenge of Humayun Kabir and the Left-Indian Secular Front alliance had a clear boomerang effect. The BJP campaign didn’t even have to mention SIR; the AITC and its liberal proxies did all that was needed.
The conviction among the punditry that Mamata Banerjee was invincible, at least against a BJP that had no following among Muslims, was strengthened by the impression that the AITC was everywhere. It was certainly undeniable that the AITC’s presence in every nook and corner of civil society was overpowering. Whether it was Tollywood, the Durga Puja committees and local sports clubs engaged in either football or playing local busybodies or bodies regulating local markets, the Trinamool’s dadas were ubiquitous. To these were added the AITC members of municipalities and local bodies who successfully transformed politics into lucrative businesses. Just as the end of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency in 1977 led to an explosion of horror stories underlining the misuse of power by Congress members, accounts of the local tyranny by AITC leaders could easily fill a few volumes of print.
A sinister climate of fear was added to these instances of arbitrariness and corrupt practices. The eerie silence this generated was mistakenly equated with political endorsement by those who see Calcutta through the prism of literary festivals and curated visits to Durga Puja carnivals. The tensions below the surface were carefully concealed.
In chronicling the 2026 polls, there were two turning points. The first followed the realisation that the Central forces would indeed keep the goons at bay, and that the SIR had completely eliminated the possibility of widespread false voting and booth capturing. The second was the news of a stupendously high turnout of voters on the first round of voting on April 23. This had an electrifying effect on the morale of people in the rest of the state. As a candidate in South Calcutta, I can testify that from the evening of April 25, the mood of the people changed. The earlier atmosphere of widespread fear was replaced by smiles and waves directed at the candidates opposing the regime. The transformation was palpable and found reflection in the long lines of people on April 29, each one determined to have his/her say.
Counting day on May 4 did not merely herald a change in government. To many, it was a day of liberation, a day we could breathe easy, once again. Statistics don’t tell the whole story of the day the Hindus of West Bengal regained their say in the future of their homeland.
Swapan Dasgupta is member of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly and former MP (Rajya Sabha)