The May 2026 West Bengal Assembly poll results are a slap in the face of those who swore by the secret “Modi‑Didi setting” theory. According to its proponents voiced not just in tea stalls but in opinion pieces, the BJP had only been shadowboxing in Bengal and was never serious about removing Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) from power.
With the BJP defeating the TMC by a wide margin of 207–80, the “setting” theory was proved wrong. Yet the BJP may not want the TMC to implode after such a decisive defeat, even as several of its elected leaders look to jump ship.
A total collapse could revive the Left parties — mainstreaming an ideology that the BJP and the Sangh Parivar have fought against for decades, reports ThePrint.
Implosion Imminent?
The once‑formidable TMC is facing an existential crisis. BJP MP Saumitra Khan told the press that as many as 50 Trinamool MLAs and 20 MPs were unhappy and ready to switch if the central leadership approved. He said the TMC would cease to exist as a political force if these leaders were inducted.
An India Today report noted nearly 100 TMC councillors from different municipalities have resigned in recent days, opening space for the BJP to expand its footprint in local bodies. At this point, TMC leaders are competing over who will join the BJP first.
“The TMC could never become a proper political party as it doesn’t have a political ideology of its own. Mamata Banerjee opposed Congress and broke out to form TMC. Then she defined herself and her new party as everything that was anti‑Left. After she came to power, her party gradually came to define itself as being anti‑BJP,” political commentator and Calcutta High Court senior advocate Joydeep Sen told ThePrint.
For Sen, a party that stands for nothing and opposes everything is bound to implode. With workers deserting and others facing court cases and arrests, Mamata Banerjee’s biggest challenge is to hold the party together — and not concede Opposition space to the Left.
Revival of the Left?
At first glance, the Left does not look like a serious challenger, as the TMC still won 80 seats. The Left Front alliance secured only two seats — one by CPI(M) and one by the All India Secular Front — after three consecutive elections with zero wins.
But the Falta bypoll on 24 May has brought the Left back into conversation. BJP’s Debangshu Panda won by over one lakh votes, while CPM‑backed Shambhu Nath Kurmi came second with 40,645 votes. The TMC finished fourth.
The numbers have led many analysts to believe that a section of anti‑TMC voters shifted towards the Left this time, Zee News reported.
For years, Bengal politics was locked in a straight BJP vs TMC fight. Falta’s numbers have caught attention across party lines.
Ayan Guha, Bengal watcher and British Academy International Fellow at the University of Sussex, said the TMC’s defeat could paradoxically create space for the CPM. “In West Bengal with 30 percent Muslim population there is a ready‑made anti‑BJP opposition space. Therefore, structurally there is a large opposition space in West Bengal which in all likelihood will always hover around 40 percent,” Guha told ThePrint.
He added that with the TMC imploding and facing public ire, the Opposition space could gravitate to the CPM or a CPM‑Congress alliance.
“From an ideological point of view, politics of the Right is also likely to create its contestation through a politics of the Left. TMC did not allow the left politics to operate by superficially incorporating the left political idioms, rhetoric and agitational mobilisation,” Guha said.
“At the same time, appropriating the logic of cultural Marxism, it also gave a blatant sanction and encouragement to identity politics in a way, which many in a traditional left force like CPM have found unpalatable.”
BJP’s Ideological Concerns
Such a revival would not suit the BJP government. In a Daily Pioneer column last year, RSS ideologue Ratan Sharda wrote: “While Communists removed nearly all the nuggets of Indian genius in governance, science and technology, the RSS kept highlighting them, despite being called orthodox and backward‑looking.
While Communists along with Nehru decried Hindus and their beliefs in a very demeaning way, RSS stood firm holding aloft high values of Indian civilization. As the hundred years of the two organisations and current scenario shows, people of Bharat have awoken to the truth of Bharat.”
And it is for such ideological differences that the BJP‑RSS would never want the Left back in prominence.
In an interview for Bengal 2021: An Election Diary, a senior RSS functionary said, “TMC’s rule, however problematic, will not damage the fabric of the state. But the Left has the power to damage the entire nation.”
