On Monday (April 27) as campaigning for the 2026 West Bengal assembly elections drew to a close, chief minister Mamata Banerjee returned to the streets, as she marched almost nine kilometres across South Kolkata to make a final appeal to voters. The march began in Jadavpur, where Banerjee had contested her first election, becoming an MP in 1984, and ended in Bhabanipur, from where the chief minister is seeking a fourth straight term. As supporters lined the streets, waved from windows and balconies, many of whom were women, Banerjee walked in her now signature style but not before making it clear to voters what this election was about.“This time it is necessary to vote to protect your own rights. The way in which they have made you stand in line due to the SIR [special intensive revision], this humiliation can be answered only through your vote,” she said to the crowd gathered along the road in Jadavpur. This assembly election in West Bengal is like no other. Conducted under the shadow of the SIR of electoral rolls by the Election Commission, the electorate in the state has shrunk by about 12%, with about 90 lakh fewer names than in 2021. Crucially, over 27 lakh voters were left to appeal to tribunals, in an unprecedented instance of disenfranchisement. Facing anti-incumbency after 15 years of being in the government, Banerjee has sought to set aside the questions of widespread corruption that her government has come to be synonymous with, along with lack of development and increasing unemployment, and made the election campaign about Bengali identity. This she has sought to portray is an identity that needs to be protected from the onslaught of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – a party of “outsiders” according to the TMC – that has unleashed through the Election Commission, an exercise that has sought to take away the constitutional right to vote. In the last five months, since the SIR exercise started in the state, Banerjee has become the first chief minister to appear in the Supreme Court against the exercise, hold a five-day dharna in Kolkata and has repeatedly accused the Election Commission of being a “BJP agent”. That the BJP too has led a communally charged polarisation campaign focused on weeding out alleged “infiltrators” through the SIR, and sent the CRPF, CAPF, NIA, Enforcement Directorate and CBI to the state in the midst of the election, has further allowed Banerjee to highlight sub-regional Bengali identity under attack, and lead a campaign that has historical ties in the state-that of Delhi versus Bengal.“This election was supposed to be very challenging for Banerjee because of the anti-incumbency of the last 15 years. There were two significant civil society movements that were seen for the first time since 2011 which saw common people rallying against her government,” said a senior journalist in Kolkata, who has been covering politics in the state for over two decades.“This included the 2024 R.G. Kar rape and murder which raised questions over women’s safety and saw widespread statewide protests, and the West Bengal SSC [School Service Commission] recruitment which also saw thousands take to the streets. The welfare schemes piloted by the TMC government including Kanyashree, Lakshmir Bhandar also had their limitations come to the fore because of the lack of jobs and development that would cause these schemes to result in quantifiable outcomes.”The TMC government also faced a setback after the Supreme Court struck down the OBC (Other Backward Communities) status granted to 77 communities which affected about 5 lakh people. The Muslim vote, thought to be consolidated behind TMC, was seen to be fragmenting.Also read: SIR Hands Mamata Banerjee a New Script to Reclaim Her Anti-Establishment Warrior Persona“A large section of Muslims felt visibly frustrated with, and even cheated by Banerjee and TMC, due to their under-delivery on public job promises, disbursement of Muslim OBC certificates, and her sharp turn-around on the Waqf issue. And then came the SIR, coupled with BJP’s loud communal propaganda which changed the climate dramatically. This was a difficult election but because of the SIR it became much easier for the CM, politically speaking, as the narrative changed, and the fight has become much easier,” the journalist said.How SIR changed the nature of the battleThe SIR, which was first conducted in Bihar last year, has taken on a different role in West Bengal – a state in which the BJP has failed to form a government despite three successive governments at the Centre. Unlike in other states, voters in West Bengal have been required to not just map themselves to the 2002 electoral rolls, but have had to battle a new criteria in the form of “logical discrepancy” which triggered duplicates and name-related mismatches that were amplified further by script conversion and rigid matching rules. The result has been that the electorate has shrunk by about 90 lakh and an alarming 27 lakh voters were left to wait for their fate to be decided by 19 judicial tribunals less than two weeks before polls, with even the Supreme Court refusing to grant interim relief. While the BJP has driven its communal campaign around the SIR, to weed out alleged illegal infiltrators in the state, Banerjee, was quick to pick up on the issue of voter disenfranchisement, combining it with Bengali speaking migrant workers being attacked in BJP-ruled states, and even pushed into Bangladesh. The poll campaign transformed from one around 15 years of anti-incumbency and the failures of the TMC, to a battle between the “Bengali and the bohiragoto (outsider),” with Banerjee returning to what she has been known for over four decades in politics-a fiery opposition leader despite being a three term sitting chief minister.“It is not just her image of being a street fighter but it is also her image of being a very humble lady coming from the slums, an ordinary person who is fighting the big media, big money, big politicians from the centre along with the packaging of Bengali nativism,” said Maidul Islam, political scientist and professor at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences.“The whole spectacle of going to the Supreme Court for those who have been deleted, followed by a dharna in the heart of Kolkata, was to give people a message. She is known to give a good political fight when there is friction. She likes conflict, and she excels in it.”Also read: Before Mamata Banerjee Came Mostari Banu: A Homemaker From a Bengal Village is Forcing the ECI to BlinkBanerjee, Bengal’s first woman chief minister has had a political career marked with conflict and confrontation, reversals and high drama. As a student leader Banerjee rose to prominence when she surrounded socialist leader Jayprakash Narayan’s car in 1975 in Kolkata. Over the course of the next decades, she consolidated her reputation as a street fighter, leading protests against the Left government in West Bengal. In 1984 she contested and won her first Lok Sabha election from Kolkata’s Jadavpur. She broke away from the Congress in 1998 and formed the Trinamool Congress (TMC). Through the 2000s, Banerjee’s TMC has supported both the UPA and the NDA at the centre at different points. A year after forming the TMC, Banerjee lent support to the BJP-led NDA and became railway minister. She quit the alliance in 2001. In 2003, she returned to the NDA and became Coal and Mines minister, and despite electoral setbacks in 2004 Banerjee remained her party’s only MP in the Lok Sabha in 2004. In 2006 Banerjee resigned from the Lok Sabha and in 2009 joined the Congress-led UPA. In 2012 however, she withdrew support to the UPA over fuel price hikes and the decision to allow foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail. A year before, in 2011, the TMC brought down three decades of Left rule in West Bengal after leading an agitation in Singur and Nandigram over people’s land being handed, ironically, to capitalists.Countering the BJP’s growthWith the ouster of the CPI(M) government, over the last decade, the BJP has made sustained efforts to make inroads into West Bengal. In 2014, as the BJP under Modi secured a thumping majority in the Lok Sabha elections, in West Bengal the party won only two seats, and just three seats in the 2016 assembly elections.In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, however, the BJP handed out a shock to the TMC by winning 18 seats, and then followed it up in the 2021 assembly elections by winning 77 seats. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, its tally came down to 12 seats.The party’s vote share has increased in the last two assembly elections, rising from 10.17% in 2016 to 37.9% in 2021. In contrast, in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP’s vote share stood at 38.73%, compared to 40.6% in the 2019 elections.Last year The Telegraph reported that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP’s ideological parent organisation, had recorded a fivefold growth in Bengal, gradually stepping into the space vacated by a declining CPI(M), and already has over 4,000 units in the state.According to Islam, the TMC did not have a strong ideological conviction like the Left, and only moved towards Bengali nativism after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.“After 2019 the TMC realised the surge in RSS units in areas like Purulia, Bankura and parts of North Bengal and they took a Bengali sub-nationalist, nativist line,” said Islam. “Because at the ideological level, the Bengali sub-nationalist line would counter the RSS’ religious polarisation. The IPAC (hired after the 2019 Lok Sabha polls) provided booth level feedback to the TMC and the TMC today is a much more well oiled booth-level organisation than it was in its first term.”In the last five years, the TMC has found itself also wooing the Hindu vote, in a bid to both counter Hindu consolidation behind the BJP and avoid the Muslim appeasement charge levelled by the saffron party against it. Last year, Banerjee inaugurated 213-foot-tall Jagannath temple in Digha worth Rs 250 crore to the state exchequer. In addition, local TMC cadres have aggressively promoted the Tribeni Kumbh, rebranding it as a form of cultural renaissance. Banerjee has also sought to rebrand the secular politics of Bengal, as an inclusive Bengali Hinduani – or Hinduness – providing state patronage to Hindu festivals and rituals.“In 2021, BJP got about 45% of the 70% Hindu votes but it did not translate into seats. To counter Hindu vote consolidation, Banerjee has been deliberately taking up these moves to give the message that Bengalis are also Hindu, but not Hindutva like the BJP, instead Hinduani,” said senior journalist Jayanta Ghoshal, who has covered politics in the state for the last four decades.Insider versus outsiderGhoshal said that in the election campaign, spurred by the SIR, Banerjee turned the battle which was meant to be a Mamata versus Suvendu Adhikari, into an anti-Delhi campaign. Adhikari is Banerjee’s bete noir who moved to the BJP ahead of the 2021 polls and is now contesting against her from her Bhabanipur bastion.“So while corruption and governance are issues contributing to a certain degree of anti-incumbency due to 15 years of being in government, the BJP in its campaign has focused on ‘poriborton’ or change, to take Bengal back to its days of glory. The battle was to be between Banerjee and Suvendu Adhikari. Instead Banerjee has turned into an anti-Delhi battle, tapping into the anti-centre mindset that has historically been there even during the Left rule. It is no longer about Bengali versus non Bengali, but rather an insider versus outsider fight,” said Ghoshal.This in turn has led even Union home minister Amit Shah, who has been camping in the state for the last fortnight, to claim that a BJP chief minister will be a Bengali from the state. Among the BJP’s star campaigners too has been former union minister Smriti Irani who has been canvassing in the state in Bengali. BJP leaders to counter the TMC’s battlecry against outsiders have been seen campaigning with fish in hand, and eating non vegetarian food to allay any fears of a threat to a Bengali identity. The central machinery of paramilitary forces, investigative agencies, and even the NIA in the state has also added to the spectacle of the BJP’s keenness to form a government in the state.“Banerjee thrives when she is in combat. With the entire cabinet campaigning in the state and presence of central forces, investigative agencies, it has only established the importance of being Mamata Banerjee,” he said.The unaddressed caste questionWhile Banerjee is looking at the anti-SIR campaign, combined with Bengali sub-nationalism to blunt the BJP’s religious polarisation and focus on governance failures, she still faces challenges borne out of the unaddressed caste question despite hopes that significant deletions among the Matuas will move the SC group back towards the TMC from the BJP.Also read: Bengal Elections 2026: Why Political Parties are Averse to the Dalit Question“Banerjee has sought to establish that the Election Commission is working like the BJP’s agent, but the campaign of Muslim appeasement has also struck a chord particularly among Dalit groups,” said Subhajit Naskar, political scientist who teaches at Jadavpur University.“In South 24 Parganas, all the way up to Sundarbans, there is a strong undercurrent of disenchantment among Dalits and lower castes over governance issues which has found resonance in the Hindu solidarity campaign of the BJP. “While in Bengal Hindu OBC identity has not shown assertiveness. The manner in which she has addressed the concerns of Muslim OBCs she has not done so for other caste groups. In the last few years the TMC started the corporate style ‘Tapashilir Sanglap’ (interaction with the Scheduled Castes) outreach campaign during elections, which is purely an electoral connect programme with Dalits,” Naskar said. But the overwhelming consensus is that has been no specific programme for SC and ST welfare. “But I would say that while the TMC has left this out, the BJP has not grabbed it and instead focused on its ghuspaithiya narrative and is trying to consolidate Hindus as a whole including Dalits,” Naskar added.