West Bengal Assembly Elections 2026 | To win, BJP zeroes in on seats TMC won by thin margin

Saffron party’s 170‑seat target hinges on narrow‑margin wins, not spreading itself thin.

As it mounted yet another campaign against Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, the BJP has gone back to the drawing board to factor in the state’s demographic peculiarities to redraft its strategy and prioritise allocation of resources towards seats that are more likely to flip.

The recalibrated target of 170 seats set by Union Home Minister Amit Shah indicates the BJP may be focusing on constituencies where it has crossed a threshold to convert votes into seats to breach the halfway mark in the House of 294 seats.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP led in 92 Assembly segments across the state, winning 12 parliamentary constituencies by polling 7 per cent votes less than the ruling Trinamool Congress.

Of these 92 segments, the saffron party has been consistently performing well in 55 constituencies, where it has been winning or leading since the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

A bunch of these constituencies are clustered in north Bengal, while the remaining are spread across the Purulia-Bankura belt west of Kolkata. The BJP has also made inroads into the Matua community-dominated Nadia and North 24 Parganas districts. An optimal performance in its strongholds can, at best, take the BJP closer to the three-digit tally, which is still well short of the halfway mark.

To raise its numbers further, the party will have to break new ground in regions dominated by the TMC. Within this batch, the BJP has identified another 70 seats where it trailed by a narrow margin in the last Lok Sabha polls, and where the probability of achieving a favourable outcome is relatively higher.

Moreover, the saffron outfit is also hopeful of making inroads into urban and semi-urban centres, especially municipalities contiguous to Kolkata and Howrah, and parts of South and North 24 Parganas, where issues like the RG Kar rape case and unemployment resonate strongly with the electorate.

The challenge for the BJP, as always, remains its near-total rout in the Muslim-dominated districts of Murshidabad, Malda and Uttar Dinajpur, South 24 Parganas, North 24 Parganas, Purba Bardhaman and Howrah.

The state has more than 30 per cent Muslim population and the community influences close to 125 seats here, out of which the Trinamool has been consistently winning in over 100.

Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM has joined hands with former TMC Minister Humayun Kabir to queer the pitch in Muslim-dominated areas. A split in Muslim votes in some pockets between the Trinamool, Congress, the Left and candidates supported by the Owaisi-Kabir alliance could help some BJP candidates sneak through in a multi-cornered contest.

Otherwise, the BJP does not seem inclined to spend resources in constituencies with more than 50 per cent Muslim population and where it has been losing by wide margins.

The objective is primarily to focus on winnable seats rather than spread oneself thin. In other words, the aim is to register a high strike rate in closely contested seats. Winning more seats with a narrow margin, even if it were to lose in weak constituencies by a big margin, offers the BJP a higher probability of getting closer to the magic number.