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Bengal’s high voter turnout is the insurrection of a spirit. Wait for true storm

West Bengal is sensitive to the BJP’s illegal immigration discourse—and Mamata Banerjee knew it would hit the Bengalis hard, given that many have their roots in Bangladesh.

From the mountains of Darjeeling to the Jangalmahal, in the middle of the forests of Purulia district—once the Red Corridor of the Maoists—the first phase of the West Bengal Assembly elections of 2026 witnessed a historic voter turnout of over 92 per cent, around eight points higher than the 2021 Assembly election’s. This is significant because the election followed the Special Intensive Revision of the voter roll. It sparked a massive political confrontation between Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress government, the Election Commission of India, and the Bharatiya Janata Party. 

The SIR has become the sole political discourse driving one of the most high-voltage campaigns of recent times. It deleted over 91 lakh names from the voter rolls, including around 27 lakh removed after scrutiny of over 60 lakh voters for logical discrepancies, a phenomenon exclusive to Bengal. These deletions show a trend of targeting Muslim-populated districts, affecting minority communities and women, the most—key vote banks for Mamata Banerjee. 

CM Banerjee is fighting her toughest battle, cornered by the BJP machinery through central agencies and the Election Commission’s massive crackdown. She has lost control of her administration as the Election Commission has replaced key officers with its own appointees. The crackdown intensified with Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax raids on Trinamool Congress candidates and the arrest of Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC) co-founder Vinesh Chandel, forcing the firm to halt operations in Bengal just 120 hours before polling.

The massive voter turnout has happened for several reasons beyond the simple arithmetic that if the total number of voters in a constituency reduces, then the turnout numbers will be higher.  Politics, and most importantly Bengal politics, is rarely about arithmetic but all about the chemistry. ‘

This turnout proves one point very clearly, what Banerjee wanted from day one, that this election must not be about........

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