After Durga Puja festivities, TMC and BJP resume focus on 2026 Bengal assembly polls

Kolkata: Barely a day after the Durga Puja festival concluded officially, West Bengal's political stage was reset on Friday with both the ruling Trinamool Congress and its principal challenger BJP wasting no time in shifting gears for the assembly elections due next year.

While the BJP's central leadership descended on Kolkata for a marathon stock-taking and strategy session, the TMC sought to turn the Durga Puja fervour into a calibrated mass outreach drive, with party national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee personally leading the festive optics and announcing a statewide series of Vijaya Sammelanis (post-Puja gatherings) from Sunday.

The Durga Puja officially concluded on Thursday with Vijaya Dashami, but the immersion of idols will continue for a few more days.

Union Environment Minister Bhupendra Yadav and BJP's Lok Sabha MP Biplab Deb, the party's observer and co-observer respectively, to oversee the 2026 state elections, landed in Kolkata Friday morning to hold their first round of consultations after being handed charge by the party high command last month.

The two, joined by central observers Sunil Bansal and Amit Malviya, huddled with state leaders including president Shamik Bhattacharya, Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari, Union minister Sukanta Majumdar, former BJP Mahila Morcha chief Locket Chatterjee, and the party's organisational leadership at its Salt Lake headquarters.

According to party insiders, the closed-door meeting dwelt on granular electoral arithmetic, from districts where the BJP lost narrowly in 2021 assembly elections to areas that showed promise in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

"The focus is clear - every organisational reshuffle and assignment will be decided on the basis of electoral gains and losses. No decision will be taken without weighing its poll arithmetic," a senior BJP functionary told PTI.

The saffron party leadership also emphasised the importance of the Election Commission's upcoming Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

"The party's focus would also remain on effective implementation of the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. The exercise will begin shortly after the Puja vacations. If SIR is implemented properly here, names of a large number of illegitimate voters will be deleted, severely jeopardising Mamata Banerjee's chances for a fourth tenure," a BJP leader said.

Though Yadav and Deb have been tasked with steering the poll machinery, leaders present said Bansal's pivotal role was underlined in the very first meeting.

"No major call can bypass Bansal," another party insider remarked.

If the BJP camp projected urgency and structure, the Trinamool Congress sought to wrap its outreach in festival sentiment.

During the Puja, TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee was spotted pandal-hopping in Dum Dum, Baguiati and other Kolkata neighbourhoods with his daughter, sampling street food, chatting with migrant workers, and even handing out gifts.

"The themes of the pandals he chose - migrant labourers, Bengal's role in the freedom struggle - were not accidental. They dovetail neatly into the TMC's political narrative," a party insider admitted.

But the real organisational push begins this weekend, when the TMC rolls out block-level Vijaya Sammelanis across the state, coinciding with the government's grand Puja Carnival on Red Road here led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

Around 50 ministers, MPs and MLAs have been tasked to crisscross the state to explain welfare schemes, network with grassroots voters and prepare cadres for the booth battle once the electoral roll revision begins.

"These are not just courtesy gatherings. The Sammelanis will set the campaign tone and sharpen cadre preparedness," a senior TMC leader told PTI.

The ruling party has previously used post-Puja gatherings as a springboard to shake off organisational lethargy - notably after the doctors' agitation at RG Kar Hospital last year. This time, the challenge is different.

"There is institutional fatigue, especially among the urban middle class. The danger is it may snowball into a larger anti-TMC wave," a party strategist said, pointing to the BJP's gains in several urban pockets in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

For Abhishek Banerjee, the shift from mass rallies to puja pandal strolls marks a visible recalibration.

"Durga Puja is about people, emotion and identity. Abhishek has chosen to be in the middle of it, not watching from the sidelines," a leader said, adding that the style change was aimed at plugging urban gaps and projecting accessibility.

As the dust of the Puja settles, Bengal's two main rivals appear determined to make every festive tradition count in their battle of optics and organisation.

For the BJP, the urgency is to iron out factional rifts and sharpen strategy under central eyes; and for the TMC, it is to convert emotion into mobilisation while countering anti-incumbency after nearly 15 years in power.

The festive lights may be dimming, but Bengal's political arena is only beginning to flare up.