Shikha Mukerjee | An Unprecedented Run-up To A Predictable Election?

There is nothing regular about the 2026 Assembly elections in four states — West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Assam — as well as the Union territory of Puducherry. The elections will be an unprecedented chapter in India’s electoral politics. One state, West Bengal, begins the election process with dates announced and the Model Code of Conduct in place, with an incomplete list of voters. Over 1.3 crore voters were slashed from the voters’ list since the 2024 Lok Sabha election, which is unprecedented too. The outcomes may not be as unprecedented as the preparations have been.

Armed with the mantra of “Detect” and “Delete”, the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of rolls carried out over almost six months, starting October, was designed to “purify” the dirty rolls and it is this process of filtration, many times over, that sets the context of these exceptional elections.

The clean-up act involves crores of names across nine states and three Union territories. West Bengal, as a border state, that in the BJP’s 40-year incrementally expanding narrative was the foremost location of illegal immigration and illegal settlement, has obviously been the focus of the most intensive scrutiny of eligibility of all voters. The EC has been particular in checking that no “ghuspaithiyas” (illegal infiltrators) remain on the voters’ list.

The presumption that the 2024 voters’ list used for the Lok Sabha was packed with “ghuspaithiyas” has directed the EC’s search for the ineligible. The SIR process, however, doesn’t end the suspicion that some ineligible voters remain on the West Bengal list, though how many and where the EC has failed to clarify.

West Bengal will thus be a test of “purity”. Disenfranchisement or purification is therefore, the subtext or maybe the substance of the electoral roll revision process and the election, depending on who is talking about it. For the Opposition across India, the elections will be a referendum on the BJP’s blueprint for establishing a hegemony of power in two of the three tiers of government. In other words, the election will be based on the absolute right to vote of every eligible adult Indian.

That being the context, the reshuffle of governors in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu was a dramatic sideshow, triggering speculation on why it was done just before the vote. There were theories that West Bengal would be put under President’s Rule (Article 356 of the Constitution) and the election would be put off till the EC disposes of all pending cases under adjudication, after the publication of the final electoral rolls on February 28.

The two-phase election, instead of an eight-phase election in West Bengal is a relief and a break from the pattern of prolonging the process that the EC adopted in the two previous elections. In West Bengal, the verdict will be decided the issue on who is entitled to vote, making it a referendum on identity-citizenship. The focus has shifted from cumulative discontent of a single party in power over three terms to the emotive and sensitive issue of a Bengali identity and a configuration of nationalism that pointedly contradicts the BJP-RSS idea of Hindu Rashtra. The election will be about the right to exercise a choice, not a mechanical choice between a greater or lesser evil, given the almost universal scepticism about political parties, but a conscious decision about which political party voters prefer and which one they do not.

For the Trinamul Congress and the BJP, there is a high degree of uncertainty on the outcome. The reasons are several; for starters, the exclusion of names of voters has made the fine art of assessing how voters in the 78,000 polling booths as in 2024 will exercise their choice an unpredictable exercise. The adjudication process of 68 lakh voters on the final voters’ list is ongoing. Extending the finalisation of voters’ names by releasing supplementary lists may fulfil the EC’s legal and constitutional obligation to hold free and fair elections on the basis of universal adult franchise, but it does expose the entire SIR process as inefficient and chaotic.

With no one knowing who is on the list and who is off it till the last moment, no one quite knows how the votes will swing. Will voters swing in favour of the Trinamul Congress and Mamata Banerjee, who made an unprecedented appearance as a lawyer in the Supreme Court arguing for voters’ rights to exercise a choice?

Will voters swing to the BJP, assured by its lead campaigner Narendra Modi that he would change West Bengal’s economic future?

Both Ms Banerjee and Mr Modi claim that voters will decide in their favour. Since that is logically impossible, there are other facts that need to be taken into consideration. The BJP starts with a deficit according to the 2021 results; it scraped together 77 seats of a total of 294 state Assembly seats.

Mamata Banerjee begins with a tally of 215 seats, and as surveys by reputable organisations like Lokniti and Centre for the Study of Developing Societies indicate, over half of all women voters have consistently voted in her favour. There is also the Muslim vote, about 27 per cent of the population, which has voted tactically in previous elections and is going to do so this time too.

The BJP’s relentless polarising and communally divisive politics has consolidated Muslim votes against the party and in West Bengal consolidated behind the Trinamul Congress. It is unlikely that the Muslim vote will be split by mavericks like Humayun Kabir in Murshidabad to the point that the TMC, despite its advantage, fails to win seats where Muslims are a significant block.

The EC has targeted Murshidabad, Malda, North Dinajpur, North and South 24 Parganas for the large-scale issue of adjudication notices; these being Muslim majority or districts with significant pockets of Muslim voters there is uncertainty about whether they will get to vote.

West Bengal has been particularly unforgiving to political parties that fail the trust test. Since 1952, the state has been ruled by three political parties, the Congress till 1977, barring two small periods when the United Front was in power, the CPI(M)-led Left Front till 2011, and then Trinamul Congress over three terms. The corollary of these long stints in power is that once rejected by voters, the losers tend to fade.

Mamata Banerjee is not as yet a spent force. The BJP is the Opposition in the state, but not a challenger. For the BJP, the 2026 contest will determine its future in West Bengal and public perception across the country, because Mamata Banerjee is a newsmaker.

Shikha Mukerjee is a senior journalist