Decode Politics: How TMC scored an emphatic win in Bengal and why BJP stumbled again

The BJP on Tuesday lost ground in the key state of West Bengal, with its tally plummeting from 18 to 12. The party that posted its best-ever result five years ago faced the second big setback in the state after the loss in the Assembly elections three years ago. The Trinamool Congress (TMC), meanwhile kept up its dominance in state politics, benefitting from the anti-incumbency votes getting divided between the BJP, Left, and Congress even as the anti-BJP vote remained intact.

The Mamata Banerjee-led party made inroads in north Bengal, where the BJP had won all seven of the eight Lok Sabha seats in 2019. In 2021, the TMC regained some footing in the area and it continued this time too as the party won Cooch Behar, with Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia defeating Union Minister Nisith Pramanik by 39,250 votes. The Congress, meanwhile, retained Maldaha Dakshin.

The TMC continued its winning streak in south Bengal, snatching the seats of Bardhaman-Durgapur, Hooghly, Medinipur, and Barrackpur from the BJP. The party retained Asansol, which the BJP won in 2019 but lost in a bypoll in 2022.

The other area where the BJP suffered a setback is the tribal-dominated Jangalmahal region which has four Lok Sabha constituencies. In 2019, the BJP won Jhargram, Bankura, Bishnupur, and Purulia. But this time it could retain only Bishnupur, where incumbent MP Saumitra Khan narrowly defeated his estranged spouse Sujata Mondal of the TMC by 5,557 votes, and Purulia, where incumbent MP Jyotirmay Singh Mahato defeated Shantiram Mahato of the TMC by 17,079 votes.

In south Bengal, the BJP managed to retain the Bangaon and Ranaghat constituencies that are dominated by members of the Matua (refugee community) religious community. Overall, the BJP