West Bengal elections 2026: How the state voted in 2021 — the year BJP surged | India News
Subvendu Adhikari and Mamata Banerjee (file photo)
New Delhi: With both Trinamool Congress With (TMC) and BJP announcing their candidate lists, the fight for Bengal has effectively begun. While the TMC has announced candidates for all 294 seats, the saffron party has so far named 144, covering nearly half the assembly. The competition is essentially seen as a direct conflict Mamata BanerjeeTrinamool and BJP led by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi.The BJP is now aiming to challenge Mamata Banerjee’s rule of more than a decade. Its rise in Bengali-speaking countries has been remarkable, going from almost zero presence to becoming the main opposition party and a serious contender for power.
The Modi-led campaign has consistently placed Mamata at the center of its political attacks, targeting an elusive prize – the country’s second-largest assembly – West Bengal.
2021: BJP’s turning point
The 2021 assembly elections mark a turning point. Despite projecting a landslide victory, the BJP won 77 seats – a lack of power but registering a dramatic rise from just 3 seats earlier and firmly establishing itself as a formidable opposition.In many ways, the 2021 elections told a bigger story than Mamata Banerjee’s victory, marking the BJP’s rise to prominence in Bengali politics.
How Bengal Voted in 2021
Often called the ‘Chanakya’ of the BJP, Amit Shah confidently announced during the campaign that the party would cross the 200 mark in the 294-member assembly, coining the slogan “Abki bar, 200 par”. The results, however, told a very different story.
BJP fell well short of not just 200 but even the halfway mark of 147 seats.The result also brought personal setbacks for several prominent faces of the party. Union Minister Babul Supriya, former Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta, and Lok Sabha MP Locket Chatterjee were among those who lost their seats.
Voting patterns and counting of misses
Much of the BJP’s strategy relied on consolidating the Hindu vote and garnering support from the Scheduled Caste (SC) community while closely watching whether Muslim voters would support the TMC. Ultimately, the results suggested that Muslim voters largely sided with Mamata Banerjee, while SC votes did not converge in favor of the BJP as expected.
BJP’s 2021 push is the highest since 2019
Compared to its strong performance in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the assembly results were a shock. At that time, the BJP won 18 of the 42 seats and led in 121 assembly segments with a vote share of 40.2%. In 2021, it won 77 seats – 44 fewer than the segments it previously led, and its vote share fell slightly to 38.13%.
BJP: A decade of rapid rise
Yet, beneath the despair lies a remarkable story of growth. Just over a decade ago, in the 2011 assembly elections, the BJP failed to win a single seat and polled just 4% of the vote. In 2014, it won two Lok Sabha seats with 18% vote share. In 2016, it won three assembly seats with around 10% vote share. 77 seats from there and a vote share of over 38% in 2021 marks a dramatic increase.In the process, the BJP replaced the Left and the Congress as the main opposition forces, which had dominated Bengal politics for decades. While both the Left and the Congress drew an empty draw in an unprecedented result, smaller players like the Rashtriya Secular Majlis Party and an independent candidate managed to win one seat each.BJP not only won seats; It has created an organizational base, a cadre and a leadership structure in the state. That machinery, now firmly in place, can craft its strategy for future battles in both the Lok Sabha elections and subsequent assembly contests.
Battle of Nandigram
Another important path for the BJP was the victory of its “giant killer” Subvendu Adhikari, who defeated chief minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee in Nandigram by a narrow margin of 1,956 votes after a hotly contested battle.The contest turned into a battle of prestige after Mamata herself chose to challenge Adhikari on her home turf. He went a step further and announced that he would quit politics if he failed to defeat him by 50,000 votes. Although he fell short of that ambitious claim, his eventual victory, even by a narrow margin, proved politically significant.The defeat dealt a symbolic blow to the TMC’s larger victory and meant that Mamata Banerjee would have to be re-elected to the assembly in six months to continue as chief minister.
