West Bengal Assembly Elections 2026 | A grieving mother fights, but shadow of Mir Zafar lurks in Palashi

Kaliganj (West Bengal): Sabina Yasmin is out on a door-to-door campaign in Palashi – the location of the historic battle between the British East India Company and the army of Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud Daula, in 1757. She pauses near Mira Balika Vidyaniketan. Tears roll down her cheeks as she meets the parents, who are waiting in front of the school – exclusively meant for the girls – to take home their daughters. “My daughter, too, would have been in the fifth grade this year,” Sabina mumbles. “She also wanted to study in a big school like this.”  

Sabina lost her daughter, Tamanna, on June 23, 2025. The nine-year-old was killed by a bomb hurled to celebrate the victory of Alifa Ahmed of the Trinamool Congress in a bye-election in the Kaliganj Assembly constituency in the Nadia district of West Bengal.

“I am fighting to get justice for my daughter as well as to make sure no other mother loses her child the way I did,” Sabina tells the parents in front of the Mira Balika Vidyaniketan.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has now fielded her as its candidate in Kaliganj – to take on Alifa, whom Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s party has once again nominated for the Assembly elections this year.

Alifa, an engineer, quit her corporate job to contest the June 2025 bye-election, which was necessitated after her father, Nasiruddin Ahmed, who was elected to the state assembly from Kaliganj in 2011 and 2021, died.

But her landslide victory against Ashish Ghosh of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the bye-election was marred by the explosion that killed Tamanna, the daughter of Sabina and Hossain Shek.

Tamanna’s death came less than a year after the outrage over the rape and murder of a young doctor at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata that put the ruling TMC in a tight spot and brought the focus on the deterioration of law and order in the state.

The ruling party moved fast to make sure that the killing of the nine-year-old would not trigger a fresh outrage.

Banerjee, herself, intervened and prodded the police into arresting several people responsible for the bomb blast, which the TMC’s rivals, CPI(M) and the Bharatiya Janata Party, projected as a reflection of the deteriorating law and order in West Bengal.

Police investigation could not convince the parents of Tamanna.

They rejected the offers of financial assistance from the TMC leaders. With the help of the CPI(M), they not only moved the Calcutta High Court seeking a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation, but also staged protests in Kaliganj and Kolkata.

Now, as a candidate of the CPI(M), Sabina is not only citing her personal loss to harp on the alleged rise in hooliganism during the TMC’s rule, but also raising other issues – growing unemployment, closure of government schools, deteriorating roads, and lack of efforts to ensure the supply of safe drinking water. 

Alifa, on the other hand, seeks to cash in on the TMC government’s welfare schemes, the legacy of her father, and the development works she initiated after winning the bye-election last year. “I am sure people will continue to shower their blessings on me, and the TMC, so that Mamata Banerjee’s government can continue the development works in Kaliganj,” she says.

Factional feud within the TMC may, however, cast a shadow on her prospects.

The BJP has fielded Bapan Ghosh to take on the TMC and the CPI(M) candidates.

A revolt erupted within the local CPI(M) unit, too, after the party declared Sabina as its candidate, and the disgruntled workers ransacked the party office in Kaliganj. The CPI(M) suspended several local leaders, who might come in the way of the party to pose a formidable challenge to the TMC in the constituency.

Mir Zafar’s betrayal against Siraj ud Daula in 1757 altered the course of history. Two and a half centuries have passed, but treachery remains a lurking threat in the political battlefield of Palashi.