Kolkata: In West Bengal’s 2026 assembly election, few seats carry the symbolic weight of Bhabanipur. This south Kolkata constituency is Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s political home turf and also the seat most closely tied to her personal and electoral journey. Banerjee has a six-decade association with Bhabanipur. She grew up here, studied here and even worked part-time at a milk booth in her early years. She has contested twice from this assembly seat. Bhabanipur is also part of the Kolkata Dakshin Lok Sabha constituency, from where she has been elected five times.That legacy is now under direct challenge, with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Leader of the Opposition in assembly and Banerjee’s closest confidant-turned-foe, Suvendu Adhikari taking her on. Bhabanipur has thus become one of the prestige battles of the election, a contest being read as a measure of Banerjee’s personal hold over urban Bengal and of the BJP’s ability to turn symbolic advances into electoral breakthroughs. This is also the second direct contest between the two leaders. In 2021, Adhikari defeated Banerjee in Nandigram. Banerjee later returned to the assembly by winning the Bhabanipur by-election, enabling her to continue as chief minister for a third consecutive term.Known for years as “Mini India,” Bhabanipur is one of Kolkata’s most socially layered constituencies. Around 76% of the electorate is Hindu. Of this, about 42% are Bengali-speaking and 34% non-Bengali-speaking. Minority voters, mostly Muslims, make up around 24%. Bengali middle-class residents remain the dominant social bloc, but the constituency also includes sizeable Gujarati, Punjabi, Sikh, Marwari and Bihari populations. Old mansions, slum clusters, temple roads, business districts and new high-rises together shape the constituency’s complex political mood. Bhabanipur comprises eight wards of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation – 63, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 77 and 82. Since the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP has steadily emerged as a significant force here. In 2024, the Trinamool Congress even trailed in Ward 73, where both Mamata Banerjee and party general secretary Abhishek Banerjee are registered voters, a telling sign of how far the contest has tightened.For TMC, however, Bhabanipur remains the constituency of belonging. Banerjee’s image as the local leader who rose from this very neighbourhood continues to resonate strongly with many voters.At Jagubabu’s Bazaar, vegetable seller Kavita Biswas summed up the emotional bond many long-time residents still feel with the chief minister. “As a woman, seeing the way Didi fights gives us courage. We attend any meeting or rally of Didi’s with our whole family. It has become our habit.”BJP’s rally at Bhabanipur. Photo: By arrangement.Among sections of local traders too, there remains visible confidence in Mamata’s personal appeal. Businessman Sunny Singh said, “Write it down with your eyes closed. Didi will win again this time too, because there is no candidate strong enough to defeat her.”But the numbers suggest Bhabanipur is no longer the impregnable fortress it once appeared to be. In the 2021 by-election, Mamata Banerjee won the seat by 58,832 votes. In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, TMC’s lead in the assembly segment dropped sharply to 8,297 votes, with the BJP gaining ground across five of the constituency’s eight municipal wards, while TMC retained its edge in the more loyalist and minority-heavy pockets. The shift was especially noticeable in business-heavy and upper-middle-class pockets, where dissatisfaction with corruption, governance and urban decline appears to be growing.The constituency has also recorded relatively subdued turnout compared with many other parts of the state with 62.6% in the 2021 Assembly election and 65.14% in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, among the lower polling figures in West Bengal.The social churn beneath these numbers is significant. Middle-class Bengalis, who make up about 60% of the area’s roughly 155,308 voters, increasingly feel marginalised as old sprawling homes give way to apartment towers and younger residents move out of the state. The rise of high-rises and “flat culture” is changing both the physical and electoral character of Bhabanipur. TMC sees this as a weakening of older neighbourhood networks and its traditional support base. The BJP sees opportunity among newer, more mobile residents and sections of the non-Bengali business class.That discontent is visible in voter conversations. Government employee Chayan Ghosh sees the election as a warning to the ruling party. “Whether you talk about countless financial scandals or the authoritarianism that has taken root over 15 years, people are no longer able to accept it. As a result, even though the BJP is a deeply disliked party, votes are going to them,” he says. “This is a warning from the people regarding Didi’s party and the functioning of the government. We do not want support for bad forces to grow, but the TMC must also reform itself.”Yet anti-incumbency here is not straightforwardly pro-BJP. Many residents angry with TMC remain wary of a BJP campaign they see as outsider-driven and thin on local roots. Tea seller Shankar Das on Kalighat Road expresses that anxiety bluntly, “No matter how much resentment we may have toward Didi’s party and its functioning, how can we live in the forest and fight the tiger? The BJP candidate is an outsider, a man from far away. Do they even have any leader here who will protect us? So we vote for them only out of compulsion!”That insider-versus-outsider theme has only sharpened this time. One of the striking developments in the constituency is the emergence of Mamata Banerjee’s elder brother Kartik Banerjee at the forefront of the campaign. Earlier, he remained part of the broader campaign team, now he is visibly in the front line. In rallies, meetings, hoardings and in Didi’s own neighbourhood, much of the organisational control appears to rest with “Dada” Kartik Banerjee. The writing on the wall at Bhabanipur. Photo: Joydeep Sarkar.Across the area, TMC is continuously holding protest meetings against what it calls the BJP’s politics of violence. Addressing one such meeting, Kartik Banerjee warned supporters, “Stay alert against the conspiracy to seize the area by bringing in outsiders!”His growing visibility is especially significant because of Ward 73, where the chief minister’s house is located and where Abhishek Banerjee is also a registered voter. In previous Lok Sabha elections too, this ward had drawn unusual attention, but this time it has become a prestige battleground for TMC. The ward councillor, Kajari Banerjee, is Kartik Banerjee’s wife. In 2024, TMC also trailed in Ward 73, adding to the pressure on the ruling party in its most symbolically sensitive pocket. The TMC supremo has also held multiple rallies across the constituency. State spokesperson Joyprakash Majumdar told The Wire, “By bringing in outsiders, the BJP wants to capture Bhabanipur and Bengal. When Bengalis speak Bengali in other states, they are oppressed there, and here the BJP dreams of capturing Bengal through the back door. That dream will not come true.”The SIR questionThe biggest administrative flashpoint in the constituency remains the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. In Bhabanipur, 50,987 names were deleted under SIR, 24.72% of the total voters from the pre-SIR electoral roll. The scale of the deletions has turned the voter list itself into a campaign battleground. TMC calls it targeted disenfranchisement and “vote theft”. The BJP says it is a necessary clean-up. Either way, the fallout has sharpened mistrust and injected uncertainty into a seat where margins have already narrowed sharply.The BJP is trying to turn that mood into a broader anti-incumbent surge. It is attacking TMC on corruption, dynastic politics and syndicate control. Ravindra Chowdhury, president of the BJP’s Bhabanipur Mandal unit, says, “We are fighting against the corruption of the syndicates. If the chief minister had really brought so much development, then why is her party’s vote share declining? Before the election, TMC is repairing a few roads and calling it development. This time, we are definitely on the path to victory in Bhabanipur.” A ‘We Love Didi’ display at Bhabanipur. Photo: Joydeep Sarkar.Home minister Amit Shah was present at the nomination of Adhikari. Forty more-star campaigners, including chief ministers from six states, are scheduled to campaign in Bhabanipur. But the contrast between headline campaigning and neighbourhood penetration remains stark. In the lanes and bylanes of Bhabanipur, the BJP still appears unable to establish the same kind of street-level presence as TMC. Its campaign atmosphere is driven largely by national leaders and central visibility rather than deeply rooted local organisation.Bhabanipur is therefore no longer simply Mamata Banerjee’s safest urban seat. Now, it is a constituency where Bengal’s larger political tensions are compressed into one patch of south Kolkata – legacy versus drift, neighbourhood loyalty versus demographic churn, welfare politics versus urban anti-incumbency, and local rootedness versus nationalised spectacle. Banerjee still enters the race with formidable advantages like emotional capital, organisation and deep familiarity with the constituency, but shrinking margins, ward-level slippages, voter deletions and a changing social profile have made this perhaps her most difficult Bhabanipur contest yet.Translated by and with inputs from Aparna Bhattacharya.