The BJP’s Bengal unit on Thursday shared on social media a 13-second video clip of Rahul Gandhi’s message to the voters of Bengal and thanked him.

“If Mamata ji had run a clean government, if she hadn’t polarised the state to this extent, the road would not have been cleared for the BJP,” the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha said in the clip.

“Rahul Gandhi keeps dropping truth bombs regarding the TMC. Thanks again Rahul ji,” the BJP handle wrote

It was part of a longer message that Rahul had shared on the eve of the first phase of polling in Bengal on Thursday.

Bengal BJP leaders like state unit president Samik Bhattacharya have been insisting all along that the 2026 Assembly election is to remove the Mamata Banerjee government from power.

“This election is to end Trinamool’s misrule, reign of corruption. Even non-BJP voters will vote for us this time,” Bhattacharya said.

In the run-up to the polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah have been upbeat about the party “conquering” Bengal, the last remaining state in the eastern part of the country that the BJP has not yet managed to win.

Both Modi and Shah have spoken at length on corruption in Bengal under the Trinamool rule and alleged support for infiltrators from Bangladesh.

Rahul’s full video is around 1.47 minutes long, in which he spoke on what he called the danger that the BJP poses for the country and Bengal. Obviously, the BJP did not use that part.

“This is election is a battle of ideologies. BJP steals elections. In Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra they stole the elections. The special intensive revision is also a tool to steal the elections,” Rahul said in the video.

In the three campaign meetings that he had addressed in North Dinajpur and Murshidabad, Rahul spoke on similar lines attacking both the Modi and Mamata governments.

After 20 years, the Bengal Congress is contesting on its own strength in all the 294 Assembly seats in the state. Former state Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, former MP Mausam Noor and the state Congress president Shubhankar Sarkar are in the fray.

“In this country the fight is between the ideologies of the BJP and the Congress. Our message in the 4,000-km long Bharat Jodo Yatra was to talk about love in the atmosphere of hatred,” said Rahul.

He cautioned Bengal’s voters that BJP did not respect the multiculturalism and the liberal Bengali mind.

“The BJP is against Bengal’s culture, history and the language. They say one nation, one religion, one language. There are multiple languages in our country, different kinds of people, various religions, different streams of thoughts. Constitution says India that is Bharat is a Union of states. We are trying to protect the Constitution. The BJP is trying to end the Constitution,” he said.

Apart from the Rahul video surprise, the social media messaging from the Bengal BJP has been on expected lines. Early on Thursday morning, the party’s X account posted a video of a man apparently being forced to untie a saffron coloured flag from a bus while a large crowd of people in skull caps surround the bus waving the Indian flag.

There was no detail provided about the purported incident in the video.

“Remember this before you go out to vote. A Hindu man was FORCED by an Islamist mob to remove a flag of his religion. To prevent the conversion of West Bengal into West Bangladesh, #BJPKeVoteDin,” the caption said.

The Trinamool and the BJP social media handles have been posting visuals of empty booths set up by the other party.

Rahul Gandhi is scheduled to campaign in Kolkata on April 25.