PM Modi to tour West Bengal, TMC draws parallel with visit of ‘migratory birds’

State BJP president and Union Minister Sukanta Majumdar told PTI that both the government events and the rally would be held in adjoining areas of the north Bengal districts.

Kolkata: Even as the Bharatiya Janata Party is keenly waiting for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tour to Alipurduar on Thursday to add momentum to its run-up to the assembly polls in West Bengal next year, the ruling Trinamool Congress has compared it with the visit of “migratory birds”.

 “I will be addressing a BJP West Bengal public meeting in Alipurduar tomorrow afternoon. Over the last decade, the various schemes of the NDA Government have been greatly appreciated by the people of West Bengal,” Modi posted on X on Wednesday. “At the same time, they are tired of the corruption and poor administration of the TMC,” he added, taking a dig at Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s government.

The prime minister will lay the foundation stone of a city gas distribution project covering the Alipurduar and Cooch Behar districts in North Bengal before addressing the BJP rally. With the assembly elections in West Bengal just about a year away, and the BJP particularly focusing on North Bengal to take on Mamata Banerjee and her party in the state, Modi’s visit is expected to give a fillip to the saffron party’s preparations for the polls.

The BJP has been trying to turn North Bengal into a stronghold of the party. But it suffered a setback in the region about a fortnight back, as one of its local leaders, John Barla, a former member of the Lok Sabha, switched allegiance to the TMC. Barla, a leader of the tea plantation workers, alleged that the state BJP heavyweight and the Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, had deliberately stalled development projects in the region.  

The state BJP is also hoping for a visit by Home Minister Amit Shah to Kolkata soon to boost the party’s campaign in South Bengal.

“Since the migratory birds are making their seasonal visit to Bengal, why not answer one simple question: Why is the Centre still withholding Bengal's rightful dues amounting to Rs 1.7 lakh crore?” the TMC posted on X, ahead of the visits of the prime minister and the home minister.

Mamata and her party have long been accusing the BJP-led Union Government of depriving the state of Rs 1.7 lakh crore by withholding the funds meant for several programmes, including the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.   

The TMC’s “migratory birds” jibe for the top BJP leaders ahead of the 2026 assembly elections appears to be a continuation of its campaign during the 2021 polls, when it called the saffron party a “party of outsiders” in West Bengal.

Modi, in Alipurduar on Thursday, may meet some of the teachers and non-teaching employees, who found themselves in soup after the Supreme Court on April 3 this year upheld the Calcutta High Court’s April 22, 2024, order and annulled their 2016 appointment to the government and government-aided schools across West Bengal for malpractices in the recruitment process. The BJP and the other opposition parties in the state cited the orders of the High Court and the Supreme Court to criticise the TMC, alleging that the court orders had exposed widespread corruption in the state government’s recruitment processes.

The prime minister may also refer to the success of “Operation Sindoor” carried out by India’s armed forces targeting terrorist camps in Pakistan and in areas under illegal occupation of Pakistan on May 7 – a fortnight after the April 22 killing of 26 people, mostly tourists, at Baisaran near Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir by the terrorists owing allegiance to the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba based in the neighbouring country. The BJP’s bid to reap the political dividends of Operation Sindoor was offset by the TMC in West Bengal, with Mamata herself repeatedly pledging her party’s support to the BJP-led union government in managing external relations and in responding to cross-border terror. Her heir apparent and the party’s general secretary, Abhishek Banerjee, joined one of the seven all-party delegations the Union Government sent around the world to amplify India’s message of ‘zero tolerance’ against terrorism sponsored by Pakistan.

Mamata sought to blunt the BJP’s Hindutva campaign in West Bengal by building a grandiose temple of Lord Jagannatha in Digha on the shore of the Bay of Bengal. The BJP, however, alleged that the TMC government was demeaning the dignity of the Jagannath Dham of Puri in Odisha by building a Jagannath Cultural Centre in Digha in West Bengal and trying to project it as a temple.

The saffron party sharpened its campaign to project the TMC as an anti-Hindu party, after the recent protests against the new Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, turned violent and led to communal clashes in Murshidabad.

The BJP won 18 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats from West Bengal with a 40.7 per cent vote share in 2019, as against just two seats and a 17 per cent vote share in 2014. The BJP’s seats in the 294-member West Bengal assembly went up from just three in 2016 to 77 in 2021, with the vote share rising from 10.16 per cent to 38.14 per cent. The TMC won 215 seats in the state assembly in 2021 – three more than its score in 2016 – with a 48.02 per cent vote share.

The BJP’s score in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections went down to 12 seats with 38.73 per cent vote share, while the TMC won 29 seats with 45.76 per cent votes.