Huge turnout amid SIR shadow caps high-stakes battle for West Bengal

PTI, Apr 29, 2026, Kolkata : The West Bengal Assembly polls ended on Wednesday with what the election watchdog said was the state’s highest-ever voter turnout of 92.47 per cent, leading to intense anticipation ahead of the announcement of results on Monday as both contenders sounded confident about their victory prospects.

Wednesday’s second phase saw a 91.66 per cent turnout by closing time, with thousands of voters still waiting in queues to cast their ballots. The concluding phase covering 142 constituencies in south Bengal appears poised to match the first phase’s record voter participation of 93.19 per cent by the time final numbers are collated.

The Election Commission said a 91.66 per cent turnout was recorded in the second phase till 7.45 pm, putting the combined poll percentage over the two phases at 92.47 per cent. The first phase of polling was held on April 23.

“This is the highest-ever recorded poll participation since Independence in West Bengal,” it said.

The capital Kolkata recorded a turnout of around 87 per cent at that time, with Purba Bardhaman district topping the charts at 92.46 per cent.

The scale of participation sent out an overarching political message—practically every eligible voter in the state felt personally invested in the electoral process and its outcome. They turned out in numbers large enough to make every narrative contested and every claim of momentum politically charged.

If the first phase tested whether the BJP could retain its north Bengal citadel, the second and final round was the real battle for the saffron party on whether it could breach the ruling TMC’s southern stronghold of Kolkata, Howrah, Hooghly, Nadia, North and South 24 Parganas and Purba Bardhaman.

At the centre of the larger political fight stood Bhabanipur, no longer merely a south Kolkata constituency but Mamata Banerjee’s political refuge, her emotional home turf and the BJP’s chosen psychological battlefield.

Banerjee, 71, seeking a fourth consecutive term after 15 years in power, faced Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari in a prestige battle widely seen as a symbolic rematch of Nandigram, where Adhikari had defeated her in 2021 after crossing over from the TMC to the BJP.

Five years later, the duel shifted to Banerjee’s own bastion. For the TMC, retaining Bhabanipur is about protecting the Chief Minister’s authority in her own backyard. For the BJP, breaching it would puncture the aura of invincibility around Bengal’s most powerful political figure.

The constituency witnessed nearly 87 per cent polling, sharply up from around 61 per cent in the 2021 Assembly polls and 57 per cent in the bypoll that brought Banerjee back to the House.

Banerjee—who usually votes later in the day and prefers staying indoors on polling day—broke convention and hit the ground before 8 am, moving through Chetla, Padmapukur and Chakraberia areas following complaints of alleged intimidation of local TMC leaders.

As she sat outside a booth amid heavy deployment of central forces, Adhikari arrived there and declared, “I will not allow any hooliganism.” He opposed Banerjee moving around with “50–60 people” with her.

Banerjee accused the BJP of trying to “rig” the election by using central forces, election observers and officials.

“The BJP wants to rig this election. Polls in Bengal are usually peaceful. Is there a goonda raj here?” she said, alleging intimidation of TMC polling agents and late-night visits by CRPF personnel to party workers’ homes.

“The atrocities by the central forces are unprecedented. What is happening is not at all free and fair polls. But despite all this, we have full faith that we will win,” she said after casting her vote.

Adhikari dismissed the charges as “frustration”, claiming Banerjee had realised that “not a single vote was coming her way”.

Tension flared again in Kalighat when Adhikari visited another booth, and TMC workers raised slogans against him. Police resorted to a lathi-charge to disperse the crowd as BJP supporters responded with counter-slogans. Reports of sporadic tension were also received from other areas amid long queues at polling stations, booth-level flare-ups and political exchanges.

In Kolkata’s Entally, BJP candidate Priyanka Tibrewal alleged that TMC polling agents tried to assault her after she objected to overcrowding inside a booth and lack of voter privacy.

In Panihati, BJP candidate and RG Kar victim’s mother Ratna Debnath faced protests, while her party colleague in Basanti, Bikash Sardar, alleged that “200 to 250 TMC goons” attacked his vehicle and assaulted his driver.

The TMC, meanwhile, accused the central forces of exercising brute force on voters at Falta’s Belsingha village, especially women, who were allegedly beaten up during efforts to disperse a crowd near a polling station. The party also alleged CAPF high-handedness on women and a four-year-old child at Sathachhia in Howrah and on villagers at Ausgram in Purba Bardhaman district.

“In the name of ensuring security, central force jawans are not sparing even women who were brutally lathi-charged. TMC protests this high-handedness of the male jawans who exercised brute force on unarmed villagers. We draw the EC’s attention to such illegal actions of the CAPF and ask the poll body to issue cease-and-desist orders against such use of force. We believe people of Bengal will respond to this on EVMs,” Anirban Banerjee, party spokesperson, said.

The BJP alleged that in several polling stations in Falta, the option to vote for the party was blocked using tape over EVM buttons, and demanded repolls in affected booths.

The state’s Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal said repolling was likely to be announced in booths where EVMs were found tampered with. However, the order will be issued only after reports from district election officers or observers regarding allegations such as tape or ink tampering are received, he said.

Amid Bengal’s charged political landscape, the balance between anti-incumbency and recalibration of electoral rolls is expected to determine the final arithmetic of power at Nabanna, the state’s administrative headquarters.

Of the 142 seats that voted on Wednesday, the TMC had won 123 in 2021, leaving 18 for the BJP and one for the ISF. Together, North and South 24 Parganas, Kolkata and Howrah account for 91 of Bengal’s 294 Assembly seats—nearly one-third of the House. Without breaking into this southern belt, there is no realistic path to power for the BJP.

For the TMC, the arithmetic is equally clear: hold South Bengal, and Mamata Banerjee’s road to a fourth straight term remains open.

The high turnout gave both camps political ammunition. For the TMC, it signalled that Banerjee’s welfare politics, women-centric schemes and personal connect remain intact despite allegations of corruption, recruitment scams and anti-incumbency.

For the BJP, the same turnout reflected silent anger against the ruling regime, consolidation of anti-TMC votes and a possible mandate for change after years of attempting to convert Lok Sabha momentum into Assembly gains.

Yet beneath the headline turnout lay the deeper undercurrent of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, which saw over 90.83 lakh names deleted statewide—nearly 12 per cent of the electorate—radically redrawing Bengal’s political map before a single vote was cast.

The electorate shrank from 7.66 crore to 6.77 crore, injecting both statistical and political dimensions into turnout figures. With a reduced denominator, comparable participation in absolute terms pushed turnout percentages higher, reshaping the social and electoral composition of the voter base.

The deepest cuts occurred in districts traditionally central to power: North and South 24 Parganas, Murshidabad, Nadia, Malda, Hooghly, Howrah and Kolkata. North 24 Parganas alone lost 12.6 lakh names, South 24 Parganas 10.91 lakh, Murshidabad 7.48 lakh, Nadia 4.85 lakh, Malda 4.59 lakh, Kolkata nearly 6.97 lakh and Howrah around six lakh.

In more than 120 constituencies, deleted names exceeded either the 2021 victory margin or the 2024 Lok Sabha lead, turning turnout into a post-poll debate over who was counted and who was not.

Polling largely followed Bengal’s familiar election pattern—long queues, booth-level clashes, allegations and counter-allegations. Yet compared to earlier elections marked by widespread violence, this remained relatively peaceful, aided by the deployment of nearly 2,450 companies of central forces across the state