The BJP has adopted a strategy to keep Mamata Banerjee occupied in her Bhabanipur constituency by pitching a narrative across the state that the chief minister is not safe in her own domain.

The process began at least six months ago when the BJP assigned to the leader of the Opposition, Suvendu Adhikari, the task of focusing on the Bhabanipur constituency.

Since then, Adhikari has put his best foot forward to intensify political activities in the heartland of the city, where the BJP has never won a single Assembly seat. Even on the day of Holi, when most leaders kept themselves busy in their respective constituencies by taking part in celebrations, Adhikari shifted his focus from Nandigram to Bhabanipur.

The Nandigram MLA, who defeated the chief minister in the 2021 Assembly elections, took part in a rally, sang religious songs, and hailed Hindu unity from Mamata’s known turf on Tuesday.

A source has said that if nothing changes at the last moment, Adhikari is all set to contest against Mamata, and that is why he has been assigned to prepare the ground for another fight against the strongest Trinamool Congress nominee once again after Nandigram.

Adhikari has repeatedly said that if the party fields him, he will contest against Mamata from Bhabanipur and certainly defeat her once more.

BJP insiders said keeping Mamata under pressure has been a party strategy for two reasons. One is to keep the Trinamool supremo busy in Bhabanipur during the election campaign as much as possible. This would help the party distract Mamata from campaigning across the state.

Secondly, it aims to create a strong pre-poll narrative that even Mamata is not safe in her own seat, which would help the saffron camp dent the morale of Trinamool workers across the state.

“The second one is more important for the party. The narrative has been established after the post-SIR electoral statistics. If you observe Mamata Banerjee, you can easily understand that she was worried and has involved herself more compared to other elections,” said a BJP leader.

Around 47,000 electors (nearly a fourth of the electorate) have been removed from the voters' list in Bhabanipur. The names of about 14,154 more voters are in the “under adjudication” status. As of February 28, the Bhabanipur electorate stands at 1,59,201.

The chief minister understood the BJP's plan well, and that is why she has met the party’s rank and file in Bhabanipur multiple times and alerted them to focus on the constituency, before the SIR was announced.

Her concern assumes significance against the backdrop of the BJP drastically lowering the gap with Trinamool in the Bhabanipur segment by over 50,000 votes in the 2024 Lok Sabha election for Kolkata Dakshin, narrowing Trinamool’s lead to 8,297.

In the Bhabanipur Assembly segment, the BJP gained a lead in five out of eight wards in 2024, which became a headache for the chief minister.

Even on Monday, at a Holi-Dol event in the city, she emphasised how the BJP had been trying to delete voters’ names from her constituency.

“My Bhabanipur Assembly constituency is small. Yet from there, 60,000 voters are being excluded. But even after that, I say I will win from Bhabanipur, even if just one elector is allowed to remain,” said Mamata to ensure that she would win the election, apparently to showcase her confidence.

A source said Mamata won the Bhabanipur bypoll in 2021 by a margin of 58,835 votes, while the BJP has been flexing its muscles by pointing out that around 60,000 voters have either been deleted or are under adjudication.

A source in Trinamool said they were not calculating based on the bypoll victory margin but were concentrating on the 2021 Assembly election, when party nominee Sovandeb Chattopadhyay won Bhabanipur by 28,719 votes.

Political experts, however, believe that the BJP can make Bhabanipur a seat of special focus to keep Mamata under pressure, but victory will be ensured only if urban voters switch to the BJP in large numbers.

“It is a party strategy that would certainly help keep Mamata Banerjee under pressure and weaken the morale of Trinamool workers. But in metropolitan pockets, the BJP has had little footprint earlier, and it can change only if the voting pattern of Calcutta changes,” said political scientist Biswanath Chakraborty.

Trinamool leaders, however, said the BJP has been daydreaming about winning Bhabanipur.

“If you see the electoral data, you will find that only 57 per cent of voters in 2021 cast their votes, which means nearly one lakh voters did not vote in the last election as they were either shifted or deceased. So how can the BJP even dream of winning Bhabanipur?” asked Trinamool spokesperson Arup Chakraborty.

“Yes, they are trying to remove over 11,000 genuine voters (under adjudication) from the electoral rolls. We are doing everything, including pursuing legal procedures, to get their names included,” he added.