Bihar taken, BJP begins Bengal huddle

After an emphatic victory in Bihar, BJP strategists have turned their attention to West Bengal. Their cue to shift gear came on November 14, the day of Bihar election results when Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a clarion call to saffron cadres to start preparing for the 2026 Bengal battle.

“Bihar results have paved the way for BJP’s victory in West Bengal. Gangaji reaches Bengal after passing through Bihar only,” Modi said from the BJP national headquarters in Delhi, delivering to the Sangh parivar its Bengal battle cry.

Since then, central BJP’s huddles around Bengal elections have intensified even as the ruling Trinamool Congress and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee plan ways to get around Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in the state. The exercise led to 68 lakh votes being struck off in Bihar. A similar scale of deletions in Bengal, TMC fears, could hit its prospects in 2026.

A Trinamool delegation accordingly petitioned Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar in New Delhi this week asking for the SIR exercise to be staggered over three years rather than few months and alleging that the recent block-level polling officers’ deaths by suicide across states were linked to the stress of SIR’s tight timelines.

The poll panel responded by extending timelines for a week, but the TMC was unimpressed.

This is a cosmetic extension, feels the Mamata Banerjee-led outfit, while the BJP welcomes the move even as principal rivals in Bengal get ready for what observers term the “mother of all battles”.

“Bengal will see a clash of titans - Modi and Mamata. Needless to say, this will be Mamata’s toughest election since she broke away from the Congress to form the TMC in 1998,” says a TMC old-timer who has witnessed Mamata’s rise.

The firebrand leader won her Lok Sabha elections from the CPM citadel of Jadavpur in 1984 defeating Somnath Chatterjee and had faced her first and last defeat until now at the hands of CPM’s Malini Bhattacharya in Jadavpur in 1989.

Political observers describe fearlessness and ground connection as Mamata’s top strengths. They recall the rebel in the TMC chief who openly mocked the 1997 Congress Session held in Kolkata’s Netaji Indoor Stadium (where Sonia Gandhi became primary member of the party) and went on to organise her own public meeting at Brigade Parade grounds calling it the Outdoor AICC session.

Soon afterwards during 1998 Lok Sabha elections, Mamata formed the All-India Trinamool Congress winning seven parliamentary seats in Kolkata and surrounding areas.

In 2009 LS and 2011 Assembly polls, she allied with the Congress to register big wins. But the romance was short-lived and Mamata’s 2014 general election win reduced Left Parties to 2 seats from their previous 15 and the Congress from 6 to 4.

As traditional rivals continued to shrink, the Modi-led BJP expanded in Bengal and is now planning to go for the kill.

“Unlike the raucous battle of 2021, the next election will unfold in near silence, a quiet verdict delivered at the ballot box, reducing Mamata’s fortress to dust and her grip to a ghost,” says BJP’s Bengal co-incharge Amit Malviya.

Saffron strategists cite numbers to say why they will gain in Bengal.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the TMC won 22 seats and a 43.7% vote share, while the BJP, an obscure force in the state, took 18 seats and 40.6% votes, a gap of 3.1 percentage, translating to roughly 17.3 lakh votes statewide out of 5.6 crore polled.

The party credited its Bengal surge to Hindu consolidation and murmurs of demographic churn.

In the 2021 Assembly elections, the BJP won 77 seats - up from 3 in the previous elections and secured 38.1% votes against TMC’s 48.6%.

The vote share gap fell under 10%, which meant roughly 60 lakh votes in an electorate of 7.1 crore.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the TMC regained 29 seats and 46.2% vote share, while the BJP fell from 18 to 12 seats but held on to a vote share of 39.1%.

The vote gap, BJP leaders say, narrowed further to 7.1 percentage points, which was about 42 lakh votes out of 6 crore votes cast.

With the SIR exercise underway, it remains to be seen which way the tide will finally turn.

Until full reports on vote deletions come, Bengal will keep shaping up as a battle between Mamata and Modi. This narrative may, however, change after February 14, 2026, the day the Election Commission publishes final electoral rolls after the completion of the SIR process.