The Bharatiya Janata Party won power in West Bengal, defeating the All India Trinamool Congress in a landslide result.

It won 208 of the 294 seats on offer.

That left it 60 seats clear of a majority.

The BJP took 70.7% of the seats on 45.9% of the vote.

The AITC fell to 80 seats on 40.7% of the vote.

Suvendu Adhikari, a minister in Mamata Banerjee's government since 2016, resigned from the All India Trinamool Congress on 17 December 2020 and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on 19 December 2020. In 2021 he defeated Banerjee in Nandigram by 1,956 votes.¹

Ahead of the election, the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision removed around 9 million entries from the state's rolls. Trinamool alleged minority and Matua voters were disproportionately removed. The Supreme Court upheld the exercise in May 2026.²

The BJP contested all 294 seats alone, campaigning on alleged infiltration from Bangladesh, the Citizenship Amendment Act, the school-recruitment scam, and women's safety after the 2024 RG Kar Medical College case. It gave its Panihati ticket to the victim's mother.³

Trinamool fielded 291 candidates, with ally Bharatiya Gorkha Prajatantrik Morcha contesting three. It called the citizenship and roll-revision rhetoric communal polarisation and dismissed the infiltration claims as politically motivated.⁴

Polling ran in two phases, 23 and 29 April, across 293 seats. The Election Commission repolled Falta on 21 May after complaints of tape covering the BJP candidate's name on voting machines.⁵

AITC saw its winning streak end in collapse.

It had won 3 elections in a row before this one.

The single biggest movement ran from AITC to BJP, covering 130 of the 137 seats that changed hands.

BJP itself grew from 77 seats to 208 seats this time.

Turnout, the share of registered voters who actually cast a ballot, rose +12.0 pp from the previous election — the highest the state has recorded.

The closest race was at Rajarhat New Town, West Bengal, decided by 316 votes.

Falta, West Bengal was won by 51.9% of the vote — the same seat the Election Commission repolled after complaints of tape covering BJP's candidate's name.⁵

Bhangar, West Bengal recorded the highest turnout of any seat, 98.1%, and also drew the most candidates, 19.

Daspur, West Bengal was the largest constituency by registered voters, with 2,96,256 on its rolls.

NOTA — None of the Above, a ballot option letting voters formally reject every candidate on offer — drew 4,95,716 votes statewide, 0.8% of the total.

The Communist Party of India split in 1964, and a breakaway faction registered separately as the Communist Party of India (Marxist).⁶

That party went on to lead the Left Front to power in West Bengal in 1977, when Jyoti Basu was sworn in as Chief Minister.⁷

It governed for 34 years, until AITC, allied with the Indian National Congress, ended that run in 2011, and Mamata Banerjee was sworn in as the state's first woman Chief Minister.⁸