A devastating defeat on the scale suffered by the All India Trinamool Congress in West Bengal on May 4 is bound to create political convulsions. The party’s unsettled state was heightened by the circumstances of the fall. There was absolutely nothing to suggest that either Mamata Banerjee and the top leadership of the AITC or the foot soldiers of the organisation expected to be removed from power by the electorate, that too so conclusively. Despite the nervousness caused by the high turnout of voters, particularly from social sections disinclined to endorse a fourth term for the incumbent, the AITC never believed that its government was under any serious threat from the Bharatiya Janata Party. At best, there was a perception that some leaders would become casualties of an anti-incumbency mood that was clearly in evidence. Indeed, when it came to a desire to defeat candidates who were factionally out of tune, groups within the AITC gleefully joined hands with the then Opposition BJP.
The common assumption made by the AITC leadership and a section of the Bengali social establishment was that after its third victory in 2021, West Bengal had reached a state of one-party dominance. It was believed that, like the Congress in different parts of India in the 1950s and the 1960s, politics centred on the ruling dispensation and that the Opposition parties operated on the margins. The real excitement of politics, it was believed, would be felt in the internal pulls and pressures of the AITC. Therefore, political activity centred on the fractious relationships of different AITC bosses, all of them competing for the huge spoils of political office. Since the local elections of 2018, West Bengal ceased to have competitive politics. It was replaced by the State-monitored system of AITC domination of panchayats, municipalities and other local bodies.
This was a self-serving belief that was grounded in profound arrogance, swagger and unacceptable levels of corruption. During the election campaign, I encountered scores of poor men and women who had suffered persecution and loss of livelihood for the ‘crime’ of having actively supported the BJP in 2021. People were routinely summoned by local AITC councillors to the party office, humiliated and punished. In one instance, the water connection of three houses was shut because a BJP public meeting had been held on their doorstep.
It didn’t stop at the doorsteps of the most vulnerable sections. Many of those so-called celebrities who came before the cameras to embrace the AITC and read a script prepared by a consultant were told in no uncertain terms that the alternative was loss of livelihood. In the aftermath of May 4, there are many who have done abrupt U-turns citing ‘unbearable pressure’ to explain their past conduct. Some of these explanations are patently disingenuous. I had occasion to remind a gentleman who played a big role in trying to establish Mamata Banerjee as a writer, second perhaps to only Rabindranath Tagore, of L.K. Advani’s observation on the supplicant media during the Emergency of 1975-77: “When asked to bend, they crawled.”
The graphic tales of how a political party was subverted by carpetbaggers and even turned into a mafia operation will undoubtedly emerge in the coming days. Not all of these — particularly accounts of how real estate sharks developed a cosy relationship with AITC politicians — are necessarily exaggerated stories. A reason why the AITC faltered so miserably in 2026 owed considerably to the backlash against the sense of entitlement and the tyranny of a dispensation that believed in its own infallibility.
To add to that, the AITC at the grassroots had lost the ability to fight competitive elections. Its dependence on fear as an instrument of acquiescence made it blind to how people really felt. The fragility of its power base became apparent once the deployment of Central forces made it difficult for strong-arm tactics to become the norm of electioneering. Consequently, once the regime came apart on May 4, there was an unseemly rush of the time servers and other perpetuators of local tyranny to jump ship.
In the aftermath of the disaster in the Falta by-election and the ignominious collapse of Abhishek Banerjee’s famed Diamond Harbour model, there is a temptation to write off the AITC entirely and undermine its relevance altogether. Such a conclusion would be rushed.
There is no doubt that the AITC is yet to gauge the magnitude of its defeat. There is a temptation to blame the reverses on either the Election Commission of India or the subterfuge of the Union home ministry. However, this denial is likely to be short-lived. Sooner or later, there is bound to be a more hard-nosed assessment of the lessons of the 2026 poll. Simultaneously, the issue of a post-Mamata leadership has been reopened by the defeat and will need to be revisited. In particular, it is clear that Abhishek Banerjee’s bid to combine money and muscle power with a gloss provided by political consultants is not yielding the necessary returns.
Additionally, the AITC’s over-dependence on Muslim votes is prompting a churning within the minority community itself. There are two visible trends. First, there are those Muslim leaders who believe it is time for a separate communal organisation that can negotiate terms from the outside with a ‘secular’ party such as the AITC, Congress or even the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Second, there is a modified version that believes West Bengal’s Muslims should re-embrace the Congress and regain a say in national life. Whichever route the community eventually chooses, the BJP will have to opt for a political route that ensures a sufficient Hindu consolidation to offset a united Muslim voting bloc.
This doesn’t imply that the BJP will have no option but to promote sectarian tension. Any overdose of identity politics is always counterproductive. For the West Bengal BJP, the most prudent course would be to combine the restoration of nationalist politics with a concerted focus on improvements in the quality of governance and rapid economic development. Both the AITC and the CPI(M) believe that the BJP’s focus on law and order and the restoration of civic pride will lead to a resistance from the underclass, create a rich-poor divide among Hindus, and undermine the BJP’s social coalition.
This need not be so. In different parts of India, the BJP has entrenched itself by combining good governance with targeted mobilisation and an ability to undermine the Opposition parties. West Bengal needn’t be any different if the inherent fractiousness of public life isn’t replicated inside the party.
Swapan Dasgupta is a minister in the West Bengal government