West Bengal Assembly Elections 2026 | 'Everything began from here': Mamata after filing nomination for Bhabanipur seat

Kolkata: Turning her nomination filing for the Bhabanipur seat into a political counteroffensive to the BJP's call for "paribartan", West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday marched from her Kalighat residence to submit her papers, projecting the constituency as a "mini India" under siege of polarisation.

Amid slogans of 'Mamata Banerjee zindabad', 'Joy Bangla' and 'TMC zindabad', Banerjee led a colourful procession to the Alipore Survey Building, where she filed her nomination papers for the constituency that revived her electoral career in 2021.

With folded hands and her trademark smile, Banerjee walked nearly 600 metres with women supporters blowing conch shells and raising ululations and party workers waving Trinamool Congress flags.

If BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari's nomination filing last week, accompanied by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, was designed as a show of saffron strength and a call for "paribartan", Banerjee's roadshow on Wednesday was carefully choreographed as its ideological opposite.

"I was born and brought up here in Bhabanipur only. I stay here 365 days a year. My life, my work, my movements -- everything revolves around Bhabanipur. Everything in my life began from here. I thank and salute the people of Bhabanipur," Banerjee said after filing her nomination papers.

Seeking to widen the contest beyond Bhabanipur, Banerjee appealed to electors across Bengal to vote for the TMC.

"I appeal to the people not only in Bhabanipur but in all the 294 seats to ensure the victory of our candidates. We will win with a bigger mandate," she said.

The TMC had won 213 of the 294 seats in the 2021 assembly polls.

But the sharpest political message of the day came through the issue of voter roll revision.

Banerjee alleged that large-scale deletions under the SIR had hit Muslims and women disproportionately and said the TMC would again move a court against the freezing of electoral rolls.

"I am really pained that so many names have been deleted from the electoral rolls," she said.

The TMC supremo also said, "I moved the Supreme Court and 32 lakh names, out of 1.2 crore, have been restored. Those who are in the adjudication list should also be restored. I fail to understand why the voter rolls have been frozen. We will again move a court."

The TMC believes the SIR has disproportionately affected Muslims and women -- two of Banerjee's strongest social constituencies -- and is trying to recast the election narrative from corruption, lack of jobs and anti-incumbency to one centred on identity, citizenship and deleted names.

That is particularly significant in Bhabanipur, where nearly 47,000 names have reportedly been deleted from the rolls, and another 14,000 were kept under adjudication.

More than 56 per cent of those whose names are under adjudication are Muslims, though the community forms only around 24 per cent of the electorate.

The TMC sought to project Bhabanipur as a "mini India" -- a constituency where Bengali Hindus, Gujarati and Marwari traders, Punjabi families, Jains and Muslims have coexisted for decades.

The message was visible even in the proposers to Banerjee's nomination papers -- Rubi Hakim, wife of Kolkata Mayor Firhad Hakim; businessman Nispal Singh Rane, TMC leader Bablu Singh; and Miraj Shah of the Bhabanipur Education Society.

Spread across eight Kolkata Municipal Corporation wards, Bhabanipur has long been one of the state's most socially diverse constituencies.

Roughly 42 per cent of its electorate are Bengali Hindus, 34 per cent non-Bengali Hindus and around 24 per cent Muslims.

The BJP, however, believes the constituency is no longer the fortress it once was for Banerjee.

Though the TMC won Bhabanipur by nearly 29,000 votes in 2021 and Banerjee later increased that margin to more than 58,000 in the bypoll after her defeat in Nandigram, the party's lead in the Bhabanipur assembly segment shrank to just 8,297 votes in the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

The BJP also finished ahead in five of the constituency's eight KMC wards -- 63, 70, 71, 72 and 74.

That has encouraged the saffron camp to field Adhikari, the former TMC strongman who defeated Banerjee in Nandigram in 2021 and has since become her fiercest rival.

"Normally, we would have to win 170 seats. But if Suvendu Babu defeats Mamata Banerjee in Bhabanipur, 'paribartan' will come automatically," Amit Shah had said while accompanying Adhikari during his nomination filing.

For Banerjee, therefore, Wednesday's march from Kalighat to Alipore was not merely the filing of a nomination paper.

It was an attempt to turn Bhabanipur into the symbolic battlefield of Bengal's 2026 election -- a contest between the BJP's politics of change and identity and the TMC's appeal to pluralism, belonging and grievance over voter deletions.