West Bengal Assembly Election 2026 | Bhabanipur at a crossroads: Loyalty to Didi or call for change?

Bhabanipur is seeing a pitched contest between Mamata Banerjee and BJP leader Suvendu Adikari

Bhabanipur (Kolkata): She waves at the crowds cheering “Didi…Didi…Didi” from both sides of the road, folds her hands, and often breaks her security cordon to meet and greet people and have a quick exchange of pleasantries — “Bhalo Achen To? Bhalo Thakben (hope you are doing well, stay well)” — before moving on in her trademark brisk pace with her padayatra.

Mamata Banerjee is back in Bhabanipur, her own constituency, after crisscrossing West Bengal for more than a month, campaigning for the candidates of her Trinamool Congress across the State. She addressed two to three rallies every day over the past several weeks, leaving it to Firhad Hakim, Mayor of Kolkata and a Minister in the government, and other trusted lieutenants to hold the fort for her in Bhabanipur — a task that, if it were before December 2020, would almost certainly have been entrusted to Suvendu Adhikari.

But now, Suvendu is the one who is taking on Mamata. Her aide-turned-adversary has emerged as the de facto chief ministerial candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party — the party he joined after quitting the TMC five years ago — in West Bengal.

Suvendu is contesting from Nandigram in the Purba Medinipur district of the State — the constituency where he had beaten Mamata narrowly in 2021. The BJP, however, fielded him against the Chief Minister and the TMC supremo in her home turf, Bhabanipur, too. Nandigram was one of the 152 constituencies which went to polls in the first phase of voting on April 23. Bhabanipur will vote on April 29, along with 141 other constituencies.  

High-pitched campaign

The campaigning has been as cantankerous in Bhabanipur as it has been in the 293 other constituencies across the State. “The gaddar (traitor) has brought in several hundred crores of rupees to buy votes in Bhabanipur,” Mamata took a not-so-veiled dig at Suvendu as she addressed a rally not very far from Hazra More, where she had come under attack and suffered a serious head injury while leading a Congress protest against the then Left Front government in 1990 — eight years before she quit the grand old party and launched the TMC.

She quotes “some people” of Chetla — a neighbourhood in the constituency — telling her: “Didi we have received money from the BJP, but would vote for you, as always”. “Please don’t forget Bhabanipur is Bhabanipur”.

Mamata recently had to leave a TMC rally at Chakraberia in Bhanbanipur midway, alleging that the volumes of the amplifiers blaring the BJP’s campaign song during a roadshow of Suvendu nearby were deliberately raised to drown out her voice. She came back to the same location the next day and led a ‘padayatra’ with huge crowds, not only following her, but also on both sides of the roads.

Suvendu had Home Minister Amit Shah accompanying him in the roadshow when he went to file the nomination as the BJP candidate in Bhabanipur. “A victory in Bhabanipur will give the BJP a shortcut to power in West Bengal,” said Shah. No wonder then, several other BJP heavyweights visiting the State campaigned in the constituency for Suvendu.

“The party Mamata leads is a party of thieves and lowlifes,” says Suvendu, as BJP supporters accompanying him in a roadshow in Patuapara in Bhabanipur raise the "Jai Sri Ram" slogan in a riposte to the Joy Bangla war cry of some TMC workers. “Please vote in large numbers on Wednesday (April 29). We have to defeat Mamata Banerjee by a huge margin,” he urges people, as the crowd raises the “Paltano Darkar Tai BJP Sarkar (We need change, and that’s why we need a BJP government)” slogan.

2021 bypoll

Sovandeb Chattopadhyay, a senior TMC leader, won from Bhabanipur in 2021, but he resigned, necessitating a bypoll in October 2021. Mamata, who had lost to Suvendu in Nandigram but led the TMC to its third straight win, contested and won the bypoll in Bhabanipur, beating Priyanka Tibrewal of the BJP by a margin of over 58,832 votes.

She had earlier won from Bhabanipur in 2011, when the TMC ended the Left Front’s 34-year-long rule and rose to power in West Bengal, as well as in 2016.

After the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls commenced in West Bengal, nearly 44,000 voters were deleted in Bhabanipur by the time the Election Commission (EC) published the draft list of 1,61,525 voters of the constituency on December 16, 2025. When the final list was published on February 28, 2026, 2,342 voters were deleted, 18 were added, and 14,154 were marked as “under adjudication”. Later, after the scrutiny by judicial officers, 3,875 “under adjudication” voters of Bhabanipur were deleted, according to the EC data released early this month.

A study by the Sabar Institute based in Kolkata revealed that over 40% of the voters removed after adjudication in Bhabanipur were Muslims, although the community, considered a loyal support base of the TMC, accounted for around 20% of the population.

The TMC chairperson, however, put up a brave front. “They (the Election Commission) deleted a large number of voters in my constituency to ensure my defeat,” says Mamata, who grew up near the Kali Temple — one of the 51 Shakti Peethas of — in Kalighat, one of the neighbourhoods in Bhabanipur, and still lives at the nearby Harish Chatterjee Street. “But I am sure I will win.”

Suvendu says the roll revision was an essential exercise to remove the illegal migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar from the lists, as the TMC had helped them get voting rights after settling them across West Bengal. He repeatedly said that the revision had already set the stage for the imminent defeat of his rival in Bhabanipur.

The EC has been dismissing the TMC’s allegation that the SIR of the electoral rolls was launched in West Bengal to ensure an advantage for the BJP.

Bhabanipur was one of the 55 villages — then together called Dihi Panchannagram — acquired by the East India Company from Mir Jafar a year after he was installed as the Nawab of Bengal following the fall of Siraj Ud Daulah in the 1757 Battle of Plassey. The suburb later became a part of the expanding city, evolving into a dense South Kolkata para that was home to icons such as Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, and, of course, Syama Prasad Mookerjee, as well as cultural legends like Satyajit Ray and Uttam Kumar. 

As Bengali bhadralok families lived alongside traders, professionals and migrant communities, Bhabanipur got its distinctly cosmopolitan yet rooted character. Mamata, herself, sought to put on display the diversity while filing her nomination as the TMC candidate in Bhabanipur, which she described as a "mini-India". The proposers on her nomination papers included Hakim’s wife, Ismat Hakim, actress-turned-politician and Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha member Koel Mallick’s husband Nishpal Singh Rane, local TMC block president Bablu Singh, and Bhabanipur Education Society representative Miraj Shah, representing Muslims, Punjabis, Biharis, and Gujaratis, respectively. The Income Tax Department later conducted a raid at the residence of Miraj Shah.

“Not only the EC, but the BJP government in the Centre also deployed the I-T Department, ED (Enforcement Directorate) and the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) to harass me and my party’s candidates,” said Mamata, and added, “But we will still win. And after winning in the State elections, we will drive out the BJP from the Centre.” 

“For us, she is not a Chief Minister, just our Didi,” said Amrik Singh, as he and several other Sikh elders joined Mamata’s padayatra as it passed by a Gurdwara in Bhabanipur. “I could set up this shop by saving the Lakshmir Bhandar money that I received from Didi,” said Basanti Sarkar, who runs a Puri-Sabjee-Chai cart near a crematorium in Keoratala, referring to the TMC government’s scheme for providing women with a monthly financial assistance (Rs 1,500 for a woman in the general category and from Rs 1,200 to Rs 1,700 for a woman belonging to any Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe). The BJP earlier ridiculed the Lakshmir Bhandar and other welfare schemes launched by the TMC government, but later reconciled with the fact that they helped Mamata create her own "labharthi varg" (a community of beneficiaries), who helped the TMC win 29 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats from West Bengal in 2024.

“Mamata gives Rs 1,500, we will double the amount. We will give Rs 3,000 every month,” Suvendu said addressing a rally in Bhabanipur, referring to the BJP’s promise to replace Lakshmir Bhandar with a new ‘Annapurnar Bhandar’ scheme with a higher monthly payout rate. The saffron party’s manifesto for West Bengal also promised monthly financial assistance of Rs 3,000 for every unemployed youth, much like the Yuva Sathi scheme launched by the TMC government with a payout rate of Rs 1,500.

“Instead of bhata (financial assistance), Didi should have focused on creating job opportunities by creating a conducive atmosphere for industries in West Bengal,” said Chandan Mishra, who runs a sanitaryware business in Bhabanipur. “People in Bhabanipur are at least talking about the BJP this time,” Madhuchhanda Bhattacharya, a schoolteacher, said, adding, “There were so many scams in the last few years, particularly in the recruitment of teachers. Let’s see what happens this time.”  

So, will Bhabanipur turn away its Gharer Meye (Own Daughter)? Or, for that matter, will West Bengal disappoint Mamata and her TMC?  The answer will be known on May 4 — the day the votes will be counted.