West Bengal Assembly Elections 2026 | BJP planning to split West Bengal into three parts, warns Mamata Banerjee

Mamata alleged that the BJP was trying to intimidate the TMC candidates, including ministers of the state government, and coercing them to help the saffron party ascend to power even if it lost the elections.

Kolkata: Chief Minister and the Trinamool Congress supremo, Mamata Banerjee, on Sunday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Union Government led by it of planning to split the state into three parts and to add some of its districts with neighbouring Bihar or Odisha.

She alleged that the BJP was trying to intimidate the TMC candidates, including ministers of the state government, and coercing them to help the saffron party ascend to power even if it lost the elections. She also warned that the central law-enforcement agencies, at the behest of the BJP-led government at the Centre, might start arresting the TMC leaders at different levels soon to stop them from working for the party during the elections.

She warned the people of West Bengal about what she described as a plan by the BJP-led government at the Centre, even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on the same day, criticised the Trinamool Congress regime for allegedly neglecting North Bengal, a region perceived as a stronghold of the saffron party.

“The BJP is planning to bring in a delimitation bill to divide West Bengal into three parts. It may merge parts of West Bengal with Bihar or Odisha, where they would target the Bengalis,” Mamata said, addressing a TMC election rally at Chhatna in Bankura.

She later expressed the same apprehension at rallies in Onda in Bankura, itself, as well as in Khandaghosh in Purba Bardhaman.

“To protect your rights, please vote for the TMC,” she said.

The Parliament of India enacted the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam in September 2023, reserving 33% of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies through a constitutional amendment. The law links implementation to the next delimitation exercise after the 2027 Census, effectively pushing its rollout to 2034. It also proposes expanding the Lok Sabha to 816 seats, with 273 earmarked for women.

The BJP-led government at the Centre is now exploring ways to advance its implementation before the 2029 general elections. The budget session of Parliament has been extended, with a special three-day sitting set to start on April 16.

A few weeks after the 2024 LS elections, Sukanta Majumdar, the then state BJP chief, suggested that the eight northern districts of West Bengal should be clubbed with the northeastern region of the country. Majumdar, the Union Minister of State for the Development of the Northeastern Region, even sent a proposal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office, underlining that such a move would ensure that North Bengal would get the fair share of funds allocated for implementation of the central government’s scheme.

Nishikant Dubey, a BJP MP from Jharkhand, suggested that the border districts of Malda and Murshidabad in North Bengal should be turned into a Union Territory, so that the central government could more effectively check illegal infiltration from neighbouring Bangladesh. Two MLAs and an MP of the BJP – all from North Bengal – made similar suggestions around the same time. The TMC called it an “evil plan” drawn up by the BJP for its vested political interests.