West Bengal Assembly Elections 2026: BJP’s north Bengal citadel, deleted names and battle for momentum

Kolkata: West Bengal is set to vote in the first phase of the assembly elections on Thursday, amid an increasingly polarised battle in which issues such as corruption and jobs have ceded space to identity, citizenship and the controversy over deleted names from electoral rolls.

The opening round of the two-phase election covers 152 of the state's 294 seats – including all 54 in north Bengal’s eight districts and several in Murshidabad, Nadia, Birbhum and Hooghly.

The first phase could determine whether the BJP can still rely on north Bengal as its principal gateway to power or whether the TMC has managed to claw back lost ground.

More than 3.60 crore voters, including nearly 1.75 crore women, are eligible to exercise their franchise on Thursday. The Election Commission has deployed a record 2,450 companies of central forces, with more than 8,000 polling stations identified as highly sensitive.

For the BJP, the first phase is virtually synonymous with north Bengal. The party's hopes of challenging the TMC statewide depend on retaining dominance in the region that powered its rise in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, and helped it emerge as the ruling party's principal challenger in the 2021 assembly election.

The BJP had won 59 of the 152 seats in 2021 against the TMC's tally of 93. For the saffron camp, therefore, this phase is its best opportunity to offset Mamata Banerjee's enduring strength in south Bengal. For the ruling party, preventing a BJP surge in the north is critical to shaping the political mood for the rest of the contest.

The phase is being fought across sharply different landscapes – the tea gardens of Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar, the hills of Darjeeling and Kalimpong, the Rajbanshi belt of Cooch Behar, the border districts of Malda and Uttar Dinajpur, and the minority-dominated pockets of Murshidabad and Nadia.

Yet, despite these differences, one issue has cast a shadow across almost every district – the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

More than 91 lakh names were deleted from the state's voter list during the exercise, shrinking Bengal's electorate by nearly 12 per cent. In Murshidabad alone, over 7.48 lakh names were removed. Nadia saw more than 4.85 lakh deletions, Malda 4.59 lakh, Uttar Dinajpur 3.63 lakh and Cooch Behar over 2.42 lakh.

Almost overnight, the vocabulary of the election changed. The campaign ceased to be only about alleged corruption in school jobs, unemployment or welfare schemes. The most politically charged words became "citizenship", "infiltrator", "bogus voter", "deleted name" and "foreigner".

The BJP has tried to turn the SIR exercise into a referendum on infiltration and citizenship, while the TMC has framed it as an attempt to disenfranchise genuine voters, particularly minorities, migrant workers and the poor.

The result is that by the eve of polling, the central question in Bengal is no longer simply who governed better. It is whether a person who has voted for decades still finds his or her name on the electoral roll.

Nowhere is that anxiety more visible than in Malda and Murshidabad, where the issue of deleted names has eclipsed almost everything else. In Malda's Mothabari, protests erupted after names were allegedly struck off the rolls, turning the area into one of the most politically charged pockets of the phase.

If identity and citizenship dominate the border districts, north Bengal is where the larger battle for political momentum will be fought.

It was north Bengal that powered the BJP's breakthrough in the 2019 Lok Sabha election and helped it win large parts of the region in 2021. But, the area no longer appears as firmly saffron as it did five years ago.

The BJP is facing local dissidence, resentment over ticket distribution and anti-incumbency in several districts. The TMC believes it has repaired its organisation and regained support among tea garden workers, Rajbanshis and sections of the hill electorate.

The issues, too, vary from district to district.

In Darjeeling and Kalimpong, the unresolved Gorkha issue has resurfaced, with Union Home Minister Amit Shah promising that a BJP government would find a solution acceptable to the Gorkhas within six months.

In Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar, tea garden wages, unemployment and economic distress have remained central concerns. In Cooch Behar and adjoining areas, Rajbanshi identity and regional assertion continue to shape voting preferences.

The BJP has sought to make infiltration and citizenship central to the contest in Malda and Uttar Dinajpur, where several constituencies lie close to the international border, while the TMC has tried to bring the debate back to welfare schemes and rural infrastructure.

The first phase is also dotted with a number of prestige battles.

Foremost among them is Nandigram, where Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari is seeking to retain the seat that transformed him into the BJP's most important face in Bengal, after his victory over Mamata Banerjee in 2021.

This time, Adhikari faces Prabitra Kar, once his trusted aide and a former BJP loyalist who crossed over to the TMC. The irony is hard to miss – a former protege challenging his former mentor in the constituency that altered Bengal's political history five years ago.

In Baharampur, Congress veteran Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury is returning to assembly politics after more than three decades in a battle against BJP MLA Subrata Maitra, which has come to symbolise the Congress' struggle for relevance in Murshidabad.

North Bengal will also watch closely the contest in Mathabhanga, where former Union minister Nisith Pramanik is seeking to retain the BJP's hold over the Rajbanshi belt, after shifting from Dinhata. In neighbouring Dinhata, state minister Udayan Guha is fighting to hold on to the seat for the TMC.

The first phase covers half the state, and stretches across the BJP's strongest turf and the TMC's most vulnerable flank. If north Bengal once again turns saffron, the BJP stays in the fight. If the TMC can stop that surge, the battle for Bengal could begin to tilt before the campaign moves south.