SAMAJ WEEKLY UK
Bal Ram Sampla
Geopolitics
A Political Analysis
West Bengal has voted, and the verdict is clear. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a massive victory in the 2026 West Bengal Assembly elections, capturing around 207 seats in a house where 148 seats are needed to form a government. Mamata Banerjee’s party, the Trinamool Congress (TMC), which had ruled Bengal for 15 years, was reduced to roughly 80 seats. This is not a narrow defeat. This is a political earthquake.
Mamata herself lost her own seat in Bhabanipur, by 15,000+ votes
Why Did TMC Lose?
The defeat did not happen overnight. Several things had been quietly building up against Mamata and her party.
(1) The RG Kar Rape and Murder Case
The most damaging blow came from the brutal rape and murder of a young trainee doctor at RG Kar Medical College in Kolkata in 2024. The case sparked enormous public outrage. Doctors went on strike. Citizens poured onto the streets for weeks. Many felt that Mamata’s government tried to cover up the incident rather than seek justice swiftly. For many women voters especially, this case was unforgivable.
(2) Fifteen Years of Tiredness
Any government in power for a decade and a half faces what is called “anti-incumbency “— people simply get tired of the same faces. Promises that were once fresh grow stale. Corruption allegations pile up. TMC had its share of scandals, including a major school jobs scam where posts were allegedly sold for money.
(3) BJP’s Organised Campaign
The BJP ran a disciplined, well-funded campaign. They fielded the mother of the RG Kar victim as a candidate — a powerful symbolic move. They framed the election as a choice between justice and corruption. Their message was simple and sharp.
The BJP successfully campaigned on the “Ghotalabaaz” (corrupt) narrative, highlighting a series of recruitment and welfare scams.
Furthermore, the state’s own machinery turned against the “incumbent”. Unresolved issues like unpaid Dearness Allowance (DA) and grueling election duties led to a surge in postal ballot support for the opposition. The loss of 22 out of 35 contesting ministers underscored a total lack of confidence in the top-tier leadership.
(4) The Muslim Voter Story
Bengal has a significant Muslim population that traditionally supported Mamata. However, there are reports that millions of voters — disproportionately Muslim — were deleted from or disputed in the electoral rolls during a special revision exercise. Whether this affected the final result is debated, but it certainly did not help TMC.
Why Is Mamata Complaining?
After the results, Mamata made a series of angry statements. She called the victory “immoral.” She accused the Election Commission of working for the BJP. She said more than 100 seats were “looted.” She promised TMC would bounce back.
Where Her Complaints Have Some Basis
The Election Commission has genuinely lost credibility in recent years — not just according to Mamata, but according to legal scholars, opposition parties across the country, and international democracy watchdogs. The 2023 law that changed how the Chief Election Commissioner is appointed effectively gave the central government, led by BJP, greater control over who runs the EC. That is a real structural concern.
The voter deletion issue — where millions of names were removed from rolls, with a disproportionate impact on Muslim voters — raised serious questions. The Supreme Court itself had to step in to allow some of these voters to cast their ballots.
So when Mamata says the EC is compromised, she is not entirely inventing this — she is pointing to problems that genuine democracy experts have also highlighted.
Where Her Complaints Fall Short
However, losing 206 to 82 is not a result you can manufacture through booth-level rigging. The margin is simply too large. If the election had been lost by 10 or 20 seats, talk of manipulation would be more credible. A gap of over 120 seats speaks to a genuine shift in public mood.
Mamata also ran the government for 15 years. She had every opportunity to fix electoral rolls, strengthen local institutions, and govern without scandal.
The RG Kar case was handled by her own government. The school jobs scam happened under her watch. Blaming the EC for all of this is not convincing.
There is also something worth noting: during polling, it was not only TMC complaining. BJP also levelled allegations of rigging and booth capturing against TMC, especially referencing what they called the “Diamond Harbour model” — the constituency of Mamata’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee. Both sides accused the other.
But here is the important counterpoint: the 2024 national elections saw BJP lose its outright majority, in an election conducted by the same EC. If the EC were fully a BJP puppet, that result would have been very different. India’s democracy is wounded, but it is not dead.
Mamata is complaining partly because she is a fighter who never concedes easily, partly because some of her concerns about the EC are genuinely valid, and partly because it is far easier to blame the referee than to accept that 15 years in power came to an end the old-fashioned way: the people decided they had had enough.
References
1.https://www.republicworld.com/elections/west-bengal-assembly-election-results-2026-live-updates-tmc-vs-bjp-mamata-banerjee-suvendu-adhikari-counting-trends-winners-leading-trailing-live-news
2.https://www.newsonair.gov.in/west-bengal-cm-mamata-banerjee-refuses-to-resign-alleges-election-process-was-rigged/
3.https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/assembly-elections-2026/mamata-refuses-to-resign-after-bengal-loss-constitution-clears-path-for-bjp-govt/
4.https://democratic-erosion.org/2026/04/17/democratic-backsliding-in-india-electoral-manipulation-and-the-deterioration-of-civil-liberties/
5.https://www.theindiaforum.in/politics/india-under-modi-shrinking-democracy-growing-inequalities
6.https://democratic-erosion.org/2025/02/14/indias-democratic-crisis/
