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Bengal’s Political Fortress Vs BJP’s Big Bet
Bengal’s Political Fortress Vs BJP’s Big Bet: Why Phase-2 Could Decide The Battle Again
Out of 142 seats in the Phase-2 cluster, the TMC won a staggering 123 in the 2021 election. The BJP managed just 18.
For the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), West Bengal’s Phase-2 belt has long represented the toughest terrain in the state. For the Trinamool Congress (TMC), it is the heartland that once fuelled Mamata Banerjee’s rise from street fighter to Chief Minister.
The numbers from 2021 still tell a daunting story for the BJP.
Out of 142 seats in the Phase-2 cluster, the TMC won a staggering 123. The BJP managed just 18. The vote-share gap was equally sharp — TMC touched nearly 50 per cent votes, finishing roughly 13 percentage points ahead of the BJP.
Even more striking was the comfort level of those victories. TMC won 91 of these seats with margins greater than 10 per cent, underlining how deeply entrenched the party’s support base had become in large parts of Bengal. And, Bengal voted in huge numbers. Turnout touched 80.7 per cent — a reminder of how intensely political the state remains.
To understand the emotional importance of this region for the TMC, one has to go back to 2011.
The political earthquake that ended 34 years of Left rule was built on the anger and mobilisation around Singur and Nandigram. Those movements transformed Mamata Banerjee into the face of Bengali resistance against land acquisition and state power.
That wave did not just change a government — it changed Bengal’s political identity.
Even today, many inside the TMC believe the emotional memory of that movement still survives beneath the electoral arithmetic.
Now, another politically charged issue has entered Bengal’s electoral landscape: SIR.
According to figures emerging from the process, 139 names were added in Phase-1 and 1,468 names in Phase-2 under the exercise. At the same time, over 27 lakh appeals were reportedly filed before tribunals, indicating the scale of contestation and public anxiety around the issue.
For the BJP, SIR has become part of a broader political argument around illegal infiltration, voter integrity and demographic concerns.
But the TMC sees something else happening on the ground.
Party leaders privately argue that the issue may actually be triggering a counter-mobilisation — particularly among minority voters and sections fearful about documentation and citizenship-linked scrutiny.
The BJP believes Bengal may finally be entering an anti-incumbency phase after years of uninterrupted TMC dominance.
Its campaign themes are becoming increasingly sharper:
In private conversations, BJP leaders repeatedly ask a simple question: “How long can cash welfare schemes outweigh economic frustration?”
But the TMC camp remains remarkably confident.
Its confidence rests on several assumptions:
At its core, Bengal’s next electoral contest may not simply be about governance or welfare. It may become a clash between two competing political emotions; anti-incumbency and fatigue on one side, versus identity, memory and cultural consolidation on the other.
And once again, the battleground where that fight may become clearest is the very region that once launched Mamata Banerjee’s political revolution.
Source: News18.com
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