Who Will Win Bengal
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2026-04-28 15:15:32
About the Author
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack
View all posts by this Author
The battle for Bengal enters its decisive phase tomorrow. The people of Bengal will vote in the second phase of the assembly elections in 142 seats that fall in the industrialised, urban belt of south Bengal. The stakes are high for Trinamool Congress (TMC) as most of its ministers, including chief minister Mamata Banerjee, are contesting from these seats. For the BJP, buoyed as it is by the exceptional voting percentage in the first phase, this is the time to gauge whether its message of change has hit home.
This is also the belt where the maximum impact of SIR has been felt. Although both the Election Commission (EC) and the BJP have taken pains to point out that a majority of the deletions have been for voters who are either dead or have moved out of the state, the TMC has changed the narrative to focus on the names who are living and disenfranchised. They are not small in number and despite the judicial intervention, have been left out due to the unique 'logical discrepancy' clause inserted by the EC for Bengal only. The BJP is hoping to benefit from the cleaning-up of the electoral rolls.
Meanwhile, both TMC and the BJP are extremely confident of winning. Opinion polls post-SIR have shown that it is going to be a neck-to-neck fight. PM Modi has campaigned extensively, drawing barbs from the TMC which has asked whether he wants to be the chief minister of Bengal. But in the absence of a charismatic local leader to match the drive of TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee, the BJP is relying heavily on Modi's connect with the people. Didi, as Banerjee is universally known, has also left no stone unturned in her attempt to stop the BJP from storming her bastion.
The TMC is confident that its welfare policies - marked by freebies to women, the girl-child and senior citizens, along with the recently announced dole for the jobless (for which nearly 84 lakh youths registered) and its hold over its Muslim vote bank will see it through. The BJP, on the other hand, is banking on anti-incumbency (the TMC is in power for the last 15 years), the politics of fear, cut-money and protection of rapists (the famous R G Kar case and the Law College case) and the alleged state of decay in the state to bring the TMC to heel.
