KOLKATA: Voters have handed the reins of Bengal to BJP, effecting only the second regime change in the last 10 assembly polls and triggering a seismic shift whose aftershocks will be felt way beyond the state.The Trinamool Congress fortress fell to a twin onslaught of strong anti-incumbency and a voter roll cut by nearly 12% by the SIR process, ceding a historic win to BJP in a state often seen as the last frontier for a party that’s been in office at the Centre since 2014.BJP had won 206 seats and was leading in one, hogging 45.8% of votes. TMC’s vote share slipped from 48% in 2021 to 40.8%, with its 215 seats in the outgoing assembly down to 81 (wins and leads till midnight), indicating a sharp shift away from a party that championed Bengal nativism over nationalist politics.Just a handful of TMC strongholds, such as South 24 Parganas, East Burdwan and Howrah, could stanch the vote haemorrhage as BJP swept large swathes of the state, from the north to the south. The saffron party’s dominance in the north was near total and, in the southwest districts of Jhargram, Purulia and East Midnapore, TMC was blanked out entirely.The killing blow was the saffron surge among urban and suburban voters in Kolkata and its fringes – Mamata’s southern fortress, where she held 123 of the 142 seats. That number shrank to 52 as TMC lost 10 seats in Kolkata (including Mamata’s own Bhabanipur), a large swathe of North 24 Parganas (including Panihati, where the raped and murdered R G Kar junior doctor’s mother was the BJP candidate) and Howrah.
