How BJP Won in 2026?
(Chapter 5)
West Bengal has pronounced its verdict. BJP has won 206 seats and TMC is confined to 81 seats. TMC usually started her winning counter from 87 seats as these are the seats where Muslim votes are above 30%, which are her vote bank. Her final tally fell below this number. Mamata Benerjee herself lost Bhabanipur to Suvendu Adhikari by over 15000 votes. Adhikari has beaten Mamata, a second time. In 2021 she lost to him in Nandigram and won Bhabanipur in a by election later. Yet in 2021, when BJP won 77 seats in West Bengal Assembly elections, it was ridiculed. The detractors quoted Amit Shah and asked why it could not win?
This is not how elections work in democracy. West Bengal may technically be a democratic state of India but for all practical purposes it was hostile. Its administration was hostile to dissenters and political opponents of Mamata Benerjee Government. For public meetings BJP/RSS had to approach High Court on several occasions after the Police refused permissions. People posting on social media were arrested.
The Digital Lathi
Mamata Banerjee’s government discovered early that physical violence had witnesses and photographs. Social media posts had authors with names and addresses.
In the immediate aftermath of 2021 post poll violence, between 50 and 100 BJP supporters were arrested for social media posts classified as fake news or threats. These were arrests made during a period when BJP workers were being killed and displaced across the state. The people documenting the violence were arrested. The people committing it largely were not. Journalists like Nupur Sharma of OpIndia had to relocate out of West Bengal. Cases against her were stayed by Courts.
Between 2024 and 2026 another 20 to 30 documented arrests followed. Four people arrested for pro-Pakistan posts in May 2025. One influencer arrested for remarks about the Army. One person arrested for criticising TMC in 2026.
Total estimates across the period run between 200 and 500 arrests, most filed under IPC sections 153A and 505, the hate speech and rumour spreading provisions that have become the preferred legal instrument of Mamata Government.
The people could not hoist BJP flags on their home for fear of violence, as stated in Chapter 2. So how did BJP won in 2026?
Tripura Win in 2018
Tripura is Bengali speaking small state in north east. It shares Bengal’s political DNA, had the same CPM machinery, and was considered equally impregnable. BJP won it in 2018 after defeating 25 years old CPM government.
There 42,000 RSS workers deployed at one per 60 voters to talk to the people. The meeting had to be anonymous at neutral places like bus or train. Visit to home was no option for fear of retaliation. When one worker personally meets 60 voters, it is an organisational saturation.
Even then Amit Shah camped in Tripura for 20 days. This time he is in West Bengal for last 15 days. He is holding meetings daily coordinating the booth level efforts. It is also the leadership commitment signal. It tells the local cadre that the central leadership considers this worth their own skin, not just their money and their instructions.
BJP won Tripura with 9x vote share jump from 2014 to 2018. For years BJP built below the surface, apparently losing, and apparently remaining irrelevant. One day, the accumulated organisational density converts into votes all at once when the anti incumbency reaches its threshold.
Tripura being small, it took two years of intensive deployment from 2016. West Bengal has had the post 2019 Lok Sabha surge, the 2021 near miss, and five more years of post poll violence as an organisational galvaniser.
BJP’s winning strategy is simple. Win the booth. If you will majority of votes in a booth then winning majority of booths wins election. To win the booth they reach out to each voter.
There is a book called The Last Battle of Saraighat written by Rajat Sethi and Shubhrashtha. It is about the 2016 Assam election where BJP ended fifteen years of Congress rule. Many of these stretegies have been discussed in that book written by BJP workers. The authors also discussed it in many talks available on Youtube. It appears BJP did not like and the authors are now keeping low profile by debating on TVs rather than doing any field work.
Anonymous Campaign
In a practically fascist State, political campaigning is difficult in the open It is like operating under a giant monster overshadowing the people, ready to lift and squeeze any one its palm if it found any suspicious activity.
In West Bengal, BJP workers campaigned in constituencies where showing a BJP flag invites a crude bomb. Door to door work requiring calculation about which door is safe to knock. Public meetings requiring central force permission and protection just to exist.
Therefore, campaigning in trains and buses is the most eloquent possible description of a democracy that has been driven underground. One cannot stand in a public space and speak. One cannot knock on a door without consequence. The innocuous the moving spaces, the trains, the buses are discovered. The brief anonymous gatherings of strangers in transit, where political conversation can happen because nobody can identify and punish the participants after the fact.
Parent teacher meeting can be an occasion to discuss state of affair and find similarly minded people. A doctor discussing crime problem with patient can be part of campaigning that no one noticed. Just two persons talking without any flag.
It is resistance politics conducted in the gaps of a surveillance state. The train compartment becomes the public square because the public square is occupied by knife wielding people who will remember your face.
In West Bengal it happened through five years of post poll violence that paradoxically made the cadre more committed rather than less, because people who have been beaten for their political beliefs do not abandon them easily.
After 2021 Elections
The 77 MLA’s contribution to 2026 is most underrated discussion in media. They held the forte for five years. They bore the brunt of administration on daily basis.
In 2021 there were 77 MLAs, the elected representatives of the people. They were winners of a democratic election. Yet every single one of them required round the clock central security cover just to remain alive in the state they had just been elected to serve. 61 of them needed security immediately after results because the threat was new and acute. Suvendu Adhikari needed Z category CRPF protection, the same category reserved for national level VIP threats.
This is not an abnormal law and order problem. This is a state that was at war with its own citizens.
Forward Bases
In any normal democracy an elected MLA goes home after winning. Celebrates with family. Opens a constituency office. Meets voters. In West Bengal in 2021 winning an election meant requiring a gunman to accompany everywhere.
The central security cover was not just personal protection. It was 77 forward operating bases distributed across West Bengal’s most contested constituencies. Each MLA with a CRPF gunman became a local sanctuary. A villager being harassed by TMC workers could walk to his BJP MLA’s office or home and stand inside a perimeter that state police and local hooligans could not cross without triggering a central government incident.
The CRPF cover around each MLA was effectively a 77 point decentralised CAPF deployment that ran continuously for five years between elections. It kept BJP’s ground presence alive in constituencies where without that cover the party would have been physically eliminated. Workers could meet. Complaints could be heard. Organisation could continue. The train and bus campaigning of pre 2021 could graduate into something more structured because there were now 77 protected nodes in the network.
This also explains the 25 to 30 percent turnout surge in 2026 far better than any other single factor. Five years of MLA offices functioning as protected community spaces meant voters knew where to go, knew someone had heard their grievances, knew the change was in sight rather than a distant promise. The CAPF and armored vehicles on election days in 2026 was just a confirmation.
Counting Day of 4th May 2026
No wonder Mamata chose to spend her last available Saturday, two days before results, in the Supreme Court trying to stop central government employees from counting those votes. The court said no before the weekend was out.
She is not challenging the voting. She is challenging the counting. Which means her own intelligence from the ground is telling her that what was cast in those booths on April 23 and April 29 is not in her favour. The petition was not a legal strategy. It was a confession of the loss already happened. It was also a confession of the bias in employees. If employees of Union Government were not trustworthy due their bias in favour of Union Government then the State Government employees were equally biased toward her. It was implicit.
Here we are. As predicted, Mamata Lost and now it is time to rebuild the State which is fallen to ashes. The phoenix cannot rise without acknowledging the weight of the ashes it is rising from. We will discuss that in next Chapter 6.
References:
- Persecution of journalist Nupur Sharma: https://organiser.org/2021/09/10/20221/bharat/after-unrelenting-persecution-by-mamata-banerjee-govt-opindia-editor-nupur-sharma-moves-from-kolkata-to-delhi/
- Police crack down on social media posts: https://www.opindia.com/2021/05/mamata-banerjee-crack-down-social-media-posts-post-poll-violence-tmc-west-bengal/
- Security cover for 77 MLAs: https://thewire.in/politics/all-77-bjp-mlas-in-west-bengal-to-have-central-security-cover
- Crime in India: https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2241336®=3&lang=1
- All Chapters on West Bengal Assembly election 2026