Kolkata: The regions where Bengal Assembly polls will be held in second phase on April 29 are the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) fortress as out of 142 seats going to elections in the second phase, it holds 123 while in North Bengal the contest may be comparatively tight as in 2021 polls BJP had achieved a dominance in several seats running on communal polarization and playing Rajbanshi & Matua sentiments.
Phase II is concentrated in South Bengal, which includes Kolkata, North 24-Parganas, South 24-Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly and East Burdwan. Historically, this region has been an electoral fortress for the TMC. Based on its deeply entrenched grassroots organisation, the TMC in 2021 won a staggering 123 of these seats.
About 152 Assembly seats across 16 of Bengal’s 23 districts, spanning much of north, central Bengal and East Midnapore, are going to polls in phase I on April 23. This region includes clusters with minority populations as well as Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe belts. Across the phase, the average adjudication rate stands at 9.83%, compared with a total deletion rate of 7.13% in the final roll. At least 39 seats in this phase have minority populations above 40 per cent of the electorate. All of them were won by the TMC in 2021.
When the 2021 results are re-projected onto the 2026 phase-1 boundaries (152 seats), TMC would have held 92 seats (60.5 per cent), the BJP 59 seats (38.8 per cent), and one seat would have gone to Others.
Based on the 2024 Lok Sabha segment mapping, the average winning margin in these seats going to polls in phase I was 9.89 per cent.
The TMC’s strike rate in this zone fell from 60.5 per cent in the 2021 Assembly election to 52.6 per cent in 2024. The BJP held steady at 39.5 per cent, while the Congress-Left alliance established a foothold with a 7.9 per cent strike rate. During the 2021 assembly elections in north Bengal, out of 54 seats the TMC won and BJP 25.