The Bengal BJP organised celebrations across the state trumpeting the outcome of the Delhi elections, with most top leaders of the party claiming a similar result in next year’s Bengal polls.

However, a section in the saffron camp questioned how long would the Bengal BJP unit continue celebrating victories in other states.

“Delhi ki jeet hamari hai, 26 main Bangal ki bari hai (Delhi’s victory is ours, it will be Bengal’s turn in 2026),” said the leader of the Opposition, Suvendu Adhikari.

With the BJP was all set to form a government in Delhi after 27 years, the party’s Bengal chapter asked all district units and state leaders to hold events celebrating the poll success 1,600km away. In several places across south and north Bengal, large processions were brought out with giant cut-outs of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and
sweets distributed.

The party’s official social media handle was flooded with slogans and posters celebrating the victory, claiming that the saffron storm that swept through Delhi on Saturday would soon blow away the Trinamool Congress
in Bengal.

“We are all happy with the party’s splendid performance in the national capital, but how long will we continue celebrating victories in other states?” asked a senior
BJP leader.

According to him, Bengal still poses a major challenge for the party for a variety
of reasons.

“The party will certainly try to use Delhi’s performance as a morale booster for the party’s rank and file here.... But we have had several such moral boosters in the past and could not capitalise on them due to our poor organisational strength,” said the Bengal BJP leader.

A section within the BJP stated that the party knows the poll arithmetic it needs to turn the tide. “We need to secure around 5 to 7 per cent more votes than what we got in the 2021 Assembly polls, when we secured 38.7 per cent, about 10 percentage points less than Trinamool,” said a source.

Though the BJP fell far short of its target of 200 seats in 2021, a tally of 77 out of 294 seats was a commendable feat. The party, however, lost momentum as its tally shrunk to 66 following
several defections.

“The steady desertion of our MLAs affected the party and its organisation..., We could not go beyond 38 per cent in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. We lost all bypolls,” said an insider.

Although several state BJP leaders admitted in private that emulating Delhi’s success would be easier said than done in Bengal, Adhikari insisted it was possible.

Adhikari, who was tasked to campaign in four Bengali-dominated Assembly seats in Delhi — Najafgarh, Greater Kailash, Ghonda and Karol Bagh — said Bengal’s people would vote for the BJP the way Delhi’s Bengalis did.

“The party entrusted me with consolidating the Bengali vote, and we succeeded in three out of the four constituencies where I campaigned. Now, our sole focus is Bengal. AAP has been defeated; next, it’s Mamata’s turn,” he said.

“Bengalis in Delhi have shown their power. Now it is time for you (Bengal voters) to unite. If Delhi can do it after 27 years, then we can do the same here in 2026,” he added.

BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar claimed the Bengal unit learned valuable lessons from the Delhi polls.

“We learnt a lot while campaigning for Delhi, and you will soon see the impact in Bengal. We knew what to do to wrest power in Bengal, but could not implement them properly on the ground,” he said in Delhi, but did not share the “lessons”.

Instead, he elaborated why the BJP did not produce the expected results in Bengal.

“In Bengal, there are many seats where the CPM received more votes than the margin by which a BJP candidate lost to the TMC. All those anti-TMC voters voted for the CPM. If we got those votes, the BJP would have won those seats,” he said.

TMC leaders countered the BJP’s claim of conquering Bengal after Delhi, asserting that the TMC would win a fourth consecutive term with 250 MLAs out of 294.

“2026. West Bengal Assembly Elections. @AITCofficial 250+ Fourth-term Chief Minister @MamataOfficial. What happened elsewhere is not our business. Delhi’s business is Delhi’s. There is no comment here. That will have no impact in Bengal,” TMC leader Kunal Ghosh wrote on his social media handle.