West Bengal Assembly election results 2026 | Lotus blooms in what was the land of twin flowers

Kolkata: The lotus has bloomed in what was the land of twin flowers.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has defeated the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, where, in the words of its general secretary, B L Santhosh, a victory of the saffron party was not only political but also “a civilisational priority”.  

The BJP mounted a concerted, high-intensity campaign in West Bengal, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing as many as 19 rallies in 22 days and Home Minister Amit Shah overseeing the party’s run-up to the polls for the past several months. The TMC also cited the frequent raids by the Enforcement Directorate and the Income Tax Department against its candidates and others associated with it, as well as the I-PAC, the political consultancy firm hired by it, to buttress its allegation that the BJP-led Union government misused the Central agencies to win West Bengal.

Mamata Banerjee’s party also accused the Election Commission of being biased and of deleting lakhs of voters — through the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls — only to help the BJP.

Hindutva was the core poll plank of the BJP, which projected illegal migration of Muslims from Bangladesh to India, and the alleged role of the TMC government led by Mamata in helping the ‘ghuspetiyas’ (infiltrators) settle in West Bengal, as an existential threat — not only to the Hindus but also to national security.

“All Hindus have united in favour of Narendra Modi,” said Suvendu Adhikari, BJP’s de facto chief ministerial candidate, as early counting trends showed the party moving decisively ahead of the TMC. “It is significant that Hindus cut across linguistic barriers to vote for the BJP. Muslims, too, did not vote en masse for the TMC as they had in the past — some backed pro-Muslim parties, and some voted for us.”

Mamata sought to project Bangaliyana as an antidote to the BJP’s aggressive Hindutva. Her party framed the alleged harassment of Bengali-speaking migrant workers from West Bengal in Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Delhi as an assault on the language and identity of the people of the State. It continued to brand the BJP as a party of outsiders, highlighting the cultural disconnect of the saffron stalwarts, coming to campaign during the elections, with West Bengal. This had worked for the TMC in 2021, but not this time around.

The BJP also succeeded in cashing in on public discontent with the TMC, on issues such as the lack of initiatives to revive industries and the consequent rise in unemployment, recruitment scams, crimes against women, irregularities in the public healthcare sector, and the closure of government schools.

To make sure that the discontent among the voters does not turn into a wave against the TMC, Mamata projected herself and her party, as well as West Bengal and its people as a "victim" — a victim of the allegedly unfair denial of Central funds for several schemes and projects, allegedly unfair use of the Central agencies and finally the allegedly unfair bias of the EC and the central paramilitary forces deployed to conduct the polls. “With the help of Central forces, they are harassing and torturing TMC workers. Our offices have been vandalised,” the TMC supremo said, even as the poll results indicated her party’s defeat on Monday, reiterating her allegation that voter list revision exercises were “purposefully done to target seats where we were strong”.

Mamata leaned on welfare schemes to build a loyal “labharthi” base that helped blunt anti-incumbency. The flagship ‘Lakshmir Bhandar' — with payouts raised to Rs 1,500 for general category women and Rs 1,700 for SC/ST women — built a loyal support base among women. Though the BJP initially derided such schemes as doles masking economic failure, it later promised similar schemes with higher payout rates, obviously to make a dent in the TMC’s support base among the women. The BJP also roped in the mother of the victim of the rape and murder at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata, and fielded her as its candidate in Panihati.