Mamata loses Bengal, Bhabanipur & Nandigram in 2026

BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari on Monday defeated West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in Bhabanipur, puncturing what was long seen as her safest political refuge and delivering a decisive psychological blow to the TMC amid a sweeping saffron surge across West Bengal. The margin -- 15,105 votes after all 20 rounds of counting -- told only part of the story. The real narrative lay in the arc of the contest: a commanding early lead for Banerjee, a steady erosion, and a late surge by Adhikari that mirrored, almost frame by frame, the dramatic script of Nandigram in 2021.
If Nandigram marked the rupture of a mentor-protege relationship and the first electoral defeat of Banerjee in decades, Bhabanipur has now cemented Adhikari’s emergence as the BJP’s principal challenger in Bengal-- and the man who can beat her on both hostile and home turf.What was once an exception has now become a pattern. In 2021, the 71-year-old leader lost Nandigram but retained Bengal. In 2026, she lost both.
Bhabanipur,a constituency she had held since 2011 when the Trinamool Congress first came to power by defeating the Left Front. Banerjee retained the seat again in 2016 and returned to it through a bypoll in 2021. The defeat comes amid serious allegations by the TMC chief and party leaders of widespread irregularities and violence during the counting process.
Hours after both Banerjee and Adhikari reached the counting centre at Sakhawat Memorial Government Girls’ High School in Kolkata, Banerjee alleged that she was attacked and that CCTV cameras at the venue were switched off. She further claimed that her party’s counting agents were not allowed to enter the centre. Calling the outcome “immoral,” Banerjee said she would seek a “counter mandate,” adding that the TMC would “bounce back.”