Straight Talk | Bengal Has Spoken, This Is Hindutva's Greatest Victory

Sanbeer Singh Ranhotra

No serious commentator predicted this a decade ago. The few who suggested it was possible were dismissed as wishful thinkers.

The BJP won 207 seats in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly election, against a majority mark of 148 in a 294-seat house. Mamata Banerjee, who had governed the state for 15 years across three consecutive terms, lost her own Bhabanipur constituency to BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari by a margin of 15,105 votes. Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the Congress strongman who had held Baharampur for years, fell to the BJP’s Subrata Maitra. The voter turnout was 92.47 per cent, the highest recorded in West Bengal since Independence. These are not the numbers of a party that eked out a narrow victory in difficult terrain. These are the numbers of a political realignment.

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To understand how dramatically this has shifted, go back to the trajectory. In the 2016 assembly election, the BJP won 3 seats in West Bengal. Three seats, out of 294. In 2021, despite a high-profile national campaign, the party won 77 seats — a significant leap, but still not enough to dislodge Mamata Banerjee, who returned to power with 213 seats. Five years later, the same party has crossed 200 seats in the same state. No serious commentator predicted this a decade ago. The few who suggested it was possible........

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