Mamata Banerjee had during her high-octane Assembly poll campaign proclaimed: “I shall win from Bhabanipur even if just one voter is allowed to remain.”
That salvo at the SIR deletions done, she had added: “Everyone knows I belong here and nowhere else. Every single person in every single household here knows me.... This area is my area, our area…. This place is like a mother to me.”
But the Election Commission’s booth-wise data suggest Mamata suffered a systematic decimation on her turf — booth from booth, ward from ward — which set up her loss to Suvendu Adhikari by 15,105 votes.
A study of data from the 2021 Assembly by-election, 2024 Lok Sabha polls (Bhabanipur segment) and this year’s state election shows a two-step decline in the home support for Mamata.
The most symbolic setback came from the corridors of Mitra Institution on Harish Mukherjee Road — the polling station where Mamata herself votes.
Consider the trajectory of Booth 260, Mamata’s home booth. In 2021, it gave her a lead of 36 votes, the then chief minister polling 321 votes to her BJP rival Priyanka Tibrewal’s 285.
The first cracks appeared during the 2024 general election, when the cosmopolitan constituency seemed to quietly mutiny against its most prominent resident.
The BJP led Trinamool by 180 votes to 144, the figures suggesting a sharp drop in the turnout compared with 2021, which too could have played a part in the results.
In 2026, with the SIR heavily slashing the electorate’s size, Suvendu led Mamata by 238 votes to 51 from her home booth.
“She could not even win from her own booth. The people of Bengal have shown her the door. Her political days are behind her. Ta-ta, bye-bye,” Suvendu, privy to these details by then, said on Monday at a Bhabanipur event.
The collapse at Mitra Institution mirrored a wider, constituency-level disaster. Of Bhabanipur’s 267 polling booths, Suvendu gained leads from a staggering 206, leaving Mamata isolated and clinging to small pockets with leads from just 60.
There were 24 booths that denied the Trinamool supreme leader even 50 votes each. Suvendu had his struggles, too, remaining stuck below 50 votes in 38 booths, but he more than made up by running up massive margins elsewhere.
Booth 227, located within the precincts of a state government press, had in 2021 given Mamata 326 votes. This year, her tally from the booth was a measly 12 while Suvendu racked up 287.
Bhabanipur constituency is made up of eight municipal wards — 63 (parts of Chowringhee, Taltala, Park Street, Shakespeare Sarani, the Maidan, and Hastings), 70 (Jadu Babu’s Bazaar), 71 (Bhowanipore), 72 (Chakraberia, Padmapukur, and Bakulbagan), 73 (parts of Bhowanipore, Patuapara, and Kalighat), 74 (Alipore), 77 (parts of Kidderpore), and 82 (Chetla).
In 2021, Mamata had swept all eight. By 2024, Trinamool’s lead had been reduced to three wards although the party led narrowly overall from the Assembly segment and went on to win the LokSabha seat.
In 2026, Mamata led from only one ward — 77 — a heavily minority-dominated pocket where Suvendu has refused to open an MLA office.
Mamata has blamed the “conspiratorial” removal of 55,000 voters (23 per cent of them Muslim) from her constituency during the SIR, and alleged widespread counting fraud.
After the results, she refused to concede defeat, claiming the entire Assembly election was stolen and that she had won a moral victory.