BJP Gears Up With 3-Pronged Strategy to Wrest West Bengal From Mamata

New Delhi: With West Bengal firmly in its sights, the BJP is gearing up with a three-pronged strategy to wrest the state from Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress.

At the top of the saffron playbook is to target the “non-Muslim” minorities, including Christians, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs. The second pillar is narrative control – to shape the political discourse before the TMC can. And third, the state BJP is believed to have started compiling a dossier of the TMC's “key musclemen” across the state and preparing to take them on through legal and administrative channels.

However, the “challenge” apparently faced by the BJP is the “palpable threat” encountered as its teams accompany Election Commission officials during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Muslim-dominated booths. “While the functionaries of other parties are accompanying the EC officials, our workers feel unsafe to enter these areas,” a senior BJP leader revealed. “But we are keeping a close watch on the officials conducting the surveys," he pointed out.

Fully aware that the bulk of West Bengal’s roughly 30 per cent of Muslim votes is likely to go to the TMC, the BJP has recalibrated its strategy to focus on other minority communities. Party leaders pointed out that the combined electorate of Christians, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs adds up to around 25 lakh voters. Internal assessments by the party (based on the last Assembly elections) suggest that the BJP is trailing the TMC by nearly 42 lakh votes. Securing a lion’s share of non-Muslim minority votes, leaders believe, could significantly narrow, if not substantially erase, the gap.

The BJP also intends to blunt what it sees as the TMC’s evolving pitch, framing the 2026 contest as a Mamata-Suvendu Adhikari showdown. This particular narrative, the BJP leaders feel, will “benefit” the TMC since “Suvendu is no match for Mamata”. Instead, the BJP machine will push hard to recast the contest as a TMC versus BJP one, party versus party, and not leader versus leader.

The BJP has also started compiling a dossier of the TMC’s “key musclemen” across the state and is preparing to take them on through legal and administrative channels. The party intends to “identify” and “try to neutralise” these “TMC bahubalis” via administrative measures.

With West Bengal elections due in March-April 2026, the BJP has divided the state in five zones -- Kolkata, Nabadwip, Howrah-Hooghly-Midnapore, North Bengal and Rarh region (Purulia, Bankura, Burdwan, Birbhum). Senior BJP leaders from across the country will be given charge of the respective zones. “Hotels across the state are being booked for the arrival of the leaders,” a party leader said. As for the election plank, the BJP intends to focus on development and governance blended with the promise of “peace” in the state.

West Bengal State Minority Morcha president Charles Nandy, when contacted, felt that the younger generation of Muslim youths and women were completely “disillusioned” with the TMC. “There are no industries, no jobs in the state,” Mr Nandy said. “The Muslims in Bengal have realised that the TMC have been cheating them for decades now,” he claimed.