From margins to majority: The BJP’s march to power in Bengal

WEst Bengal testament acquire its number one Bharatiya Janata company (BJP) authorities on Saturday. For the BJP and its larger ideological ecosystem, this is a long-sought-after achievement. Although the BJP — it was only formed in 1980 — and even its ideological predecessor the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), never achieved political relevance, let alone dominance, in West Bengal until the 2019 Lok Sabha election — or to be precise, the 2018 local body polls in the state — political Hindutva has had a strong lineage in pre-independence Bengal.Syama Prasad Mookerjee is one of the founding fathers of the BJS, starting his politics from the Congress, going on to join the Hindu Mahasabha, and then becoming the founding president of the BJS, a post which he held until his death as a detainee in Kashmir in 1953. The BJP has not had a political leader of Mookerjee’s stature in West Bengal after his death.As the BJP celebrates its conquest in what it considers to be the intellectual-political home of one of its founding fathers, it is worth looking at the party’s own trajectory in the state from the first election it contested in 1982 to the most recent one which has established it as a dominant political force in India’s biggest eastern state. It is a story of initial failure, realpolitik experiments, getting lucky because of a political void created by the collapse of the communists in the state, and then a pitched political battle for almost a decade before victory on May 4, 2026.Until the Communists messed up…When the TMC did resurrect itself – thanks to the Communists messing up land acquisition from a restive peasantry they themselves had radicalised and wider Muslim discontent against the Communists thanks to policy failures of the Left government as highlighted in the Sachar Committee report and administrative lapses around events such as the death of a young Muslim boy Rizwanur Rahman, who was in an interfaith relationship with a Hindu businessman’s daughter – it did not want to be seen as doing business with the BJP to protect its Muslim support. The latter was critical in dislodging the communists. In the 2009 Lok Sabha and 2011 assembly elections in the state, the BJP saw from the margins, the Communists being weakened in the state. In the 2014 Lok Sabha, in what was a four-cornered contest between the TMC, Communists, Congress and the BJP in the state, it drew level with the CPI(M) by winning two Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, the first time on its own. While the BJP faced a reversal of sorts in the 2016 assembly elections, the Communists dug themselves deeper into the political ideological hole they were in. The CPI (M) allied with the Congress in the elections, and finished behind the latter, thereby even losing the main opposition party status five years after it lost power in the state after 34 years.The rank and file of the CPI (M) had a bigger battle on its hands than its confused and delusional leadership. The TMC increased its attacks on them in the run-up to the 2018 panchayat elections in the state. In what was one of the most violent and disputed elections in the history of the state, with roughly one-third of the seats being won unopposed by the ruling TMC, the BJP emerged as the second ranked party in the West Bengal countryside, which has been known to hold the keys to state power.In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections which were held just about a year after the 2018 panchayat polls, the BJP stunned not just the TMC but every political analyst by winning 18 out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats from West Bengal by reaching a vote share of 40%. It was now at the cusp of victory in the state and ready for the next phase of the battle.…and the BJP completed its transition from a rebel to a rulerThe 2021 assembly elections taught the BJP that the last mile of the Bengal marathon was anything but a walk in the park. It saw its vote share fall by just about two percentage points from 2019 but suffered a massive fall in seat share – from 43% in 2019 to just 26% in 2021 – in keeping with the punishing dynamics of the first-past-the-post system in India. 2024 would bring back that pain for the BJP, with vote share and seat share numbers at par with 2021 rather than 2019.So, what did the BJP get right in 2026 which it could not in 2021 and 2024? Answering this question requires going back in time to compare the BJP’s performance in West Bengal assembly elections before and after 2014. HT has compared BJP’s vote share by assembly constituency (AC) type in West Bengal – there are 210 unreserved ACs, 68 Scheduled Caste (SC) reserved ACs and 16 Scheduled Tribe (ST) reserved ACs in the total 294 in the assembly. SC and ST reserved ACs are in sync with the population share of these two communities and thereby a good proxy for a party’s support among them.While the BJP has had a historical advantage in SC and ST reserved ACs in terms of vote share in West Bengal, it added to this advantage in the post-2014 period and generated tailwinds from these ACs of the state to compensate for headwinds from some of the Muslim dominated ACs where its chances of succeeding were extremely difficult. Even in the 2021 assembly elections, the BJP’s strike rate was just 18.2% in the unreserved ACs but 47% and 43.8% in the SC and ST reserved ACs. In the 2026 elections, the BJP’s strike rate in unreserved, SC reserved and ST reserved ACs increased to 66.7%, 75% and 100%. (Chart 2)Who did the BJP really hurt between 2021 and 2026 to capture power? A district-wise comparison of BJP, TMC and everybody else’s vote share – alliances have changed with the Left and the Congress parting ways – is useful to understand this. (Chart 3)If districts were arranged in decreasing order by Muslim population – an important variable for BJP’s political support across West Bengal – both the BJP and others gained at the cost of the TMC in the top four districts by Muslim population in the West Bengal. This suggests a possible double whammy for the TMC: Muslims leaving it for non-BJP parties and the Hindus consolidating behind the BJP.In every other district of the state except Darjeeling – here the TMC did not put-up candidates in 2021 and supported independents but did in 2026, making vote share comparisons irrelevant – the BJP gained at the cost of both the TMC and non-BJP non-TMC players. This is perhaps the manifestation of a large Hindu voter driven anti-incumbency in an election where the principal opposition party was seen as capable of dislodging the opponent as well as a larger ideological traction for the BJP’s politics. That the BJP’s vote share gain was the largest in Kolkata, the seat of not just political power but also economic and cultural prowess in the state, underlines the rise in BJP’s ideological traction in the 2026 elections.What next for the BJP in West Bengal? Will it go the Assam way, where the BJP has rendered the Opposition a party of mostly Muslims? Or now that the TMC and its oppressive grip on power is gone in the state, will the non-TMC opposition resurrect itself and be able to pose a renewed political challenge to the BJP which is now in government ? And, last but not the least, can the BJP govern and hold on to West Bengal without embracing the asphyxiating party-society tools which have been the curse of power there for more than five decades?When Suvendu Adhikari, once one of Mamata Banerjee’s most trusted and capable lieutenants, takes oath as the first BJP chief minister of West Bengal in the historic Brigade Parade Grounds on Saturday, the state will see the beginning of one of the most important chapters of its history. It is foolish to deny history when it changes, but hubris to think of events, no matter how big, as the end of history.