Opinion | SIR And TMC’s ‘Wasted Votes’: Why A BJP Win In West Bengal Is Not Unrealistic

The arithmetic is slowly but steadily moving in a direction that makes a BJP victory in 2026 possible and structurally within reach

Most political observers, using traditional tools of analysis, still believe that it is almost impossible to unseat Mamata Banerjee and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal. But a close look at the numbers reveals a different story.

Beneath the narrative of TMC dominance, an electoral reality that is far more competitive is emerging, and it makes the BJP’s challenge look stronger every passing day.

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The growing anti-incumbency against CM Mamata Banerjee is real, but it is only one piece of the jigsaw. What makes the 2026 contest increasingly exciting is the quiet but significant shift happening in the voter base itself.

In the recent Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, nearly 91 lakh names were deleted across West Bengal. Such massive deletions can upturn the political equation in a mid-sized country, not just a state. Old voting patterns can collapse, and seats that once looked safe suddenly become bitterly close fights. In a state where a large number of constituencies are decided by thin margins, even small changes in voter lists can have an outsized impact.

How its votes are distributed could prove to be Trinamool’s fatal weakness. A huge portion of the TMC’s statewide margin comes from a relatively small number of seats — mostly Muslim-dominated constituencies — where it wins by staggering, often unnecessary, margins. These ‘wasted votes’ don’t help the party win additional seats.

The data is quite revealing.

The TMC enjoys 114 seats with margins above 10 per cent, while the BJP has only 35 such ‘comfortable’ seats.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the TMC polled nearly 55.8 lakh ‘wasted votes’ (votes beyond the 10 per cent margin), compared to 11.9 lakh for the BJP (roughly one-fifth).

When one considers the 2021 Assembly base, the gap was even wider: 65 lakh wasted votes for the TMC versus 5.5 lakh for the BJP.

Predictably, more than half of the TMC’s excess margins come from Muslim-majority seats.

This means the TMC’s apparent dominance comes from its heavy vote concentration in fewer areas, while the BJP’s support is more evenly spread across several seats. In a first-past-the-post system, evenly distributed votes often translate into more seats when swings happen.

The 2024 baseline puts the BJP surprisingly close to the winning line. When one adds the winning margins across 58 tightly contested seats, a modest swing of merely 1.92 lakh votes could upset the balance of power in West Bengal.

Add to this the visible signs of anti-incumbency. There is a growing and strong undercurrent of grouse against a slew of scams, syndicate raj, political violence, Muslim appeasement, unemployment, and governance failures.

For instance, West Bengal recorded the highest number of political murders in India between 2011 and 2024 (over 114 documented cases). The state has consistently ranked among the top two for crimes against women for several years, with conviction rates being abysmally low at around 4-5 per cent, or just four accused in 100 reported cases getting punished.

All this has caused immense pain and despair. The voter churn caused by the recent electoral roll revision only adds to the fluidity of the electoral arithmetic.

West Bengal’s political outcomes have been decided as much by cold arithmetic as by emotion. Right now, the arithmetic is slowly but steadily moving in a direction that makes a BJP victory in 2026 possible and structurally within reach.

Conventional wisdom (Mamata starts the match with the 25-30 per cent minority vote, for instance) and an acute fear factor among voters suggest it is hard to unseat Mamata Banerjee. But numbers don’t always follow conventional wisdom, especially when the ground is silently shifting.

Abhijit Majumder is the author of the book ‘India’s New Right’. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.

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