BJP eyes SIR-driven Bengal sweep after Bihar election victory

BJP leaders in both West Bengal and at the national level have started actively promoting this narrative with renewed vigour as the counting of votes in Bihar on Friday (November 14) began indicating the NDA’s imminent victory in the state.

'Cleanup and sweep'

“Bihar went to the polls after an SIR of the electoral rolls, and the results speak for themselves. Now it is Bengal’s turn. Once a clean voter list is prepared through the SIR, removing fake voters, the BJP will achieve a similar sweep in Bengal,” claimed BJP leader and Leader of Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari.

Adhikari was seen distributing ladoos in front of the state assembly, along with party MLAs and supporters, as soon as the NDA was found to be leading by a huge margin in Bihar.

Union Minister Giriraj Singh echoed Adhikari’s optimism. “Bihar’s victory is ours and it will be Bengal’s turn next because there too, Rohingya and Bangladeshi infiltrators need to be removed,” he told the media in Bihar.

‘Optimism grounded in numbers’

Buoyed by this confidence, a large number of BJP supporters thronged the party office in Kolkata’s Muralidhar Sen Lane, celebrating with music and fanfare.

“The Bihar result will definitely resonate in Bengal because the SIR was one of the major electoral issues there, just as it will be here. This is a victory for a clean electoral roll,” insisted BJP worker Narayan Chattopadhyay, who joined the celebration at the party’s Kolkata office, holding a cut-out of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Also read: Congress blames SIR for Bihar election debacle, says EC colluded with BJP

BJP leaders argue that their optimism about the SIR reshaping Bengal’s political landscape is grounded in numbers. “In many seats in the last Bengal assembly elections, the victory margin was just a few thousand votes. The TMC won most of these seats owing to the presence of fake voters,” claimed senior BJP leader and former MP Locket Chatterjee.

Political shift

The party claims the ongoing SIR exercise in Bengal will remove around one crore bogus names from the electoral rolls, roughly 13 per cent of the state’s more than seven crore voters. In the 2021 assembly elections, the TMC led by approximately 10 per cent of votes over the BJP, a gap that narrowed to about seven per cent in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

According to Adhikari, the BJP could trigger a political shift in Bengal if it manages to secure an additional five per cent of Hindu votes.

In 36 of the state’s 294 assembly seats, the 2021 victory margin was less than 5,000 votes. In another 33 seats, it was between 5,000 and 10,000 votes, most of which were won by the TMC.

Locket Chatterjee claimed the SIR could offset the additional 40 to 50 lakh votes the TMC secured to win past elections.

TMC dismisses claims as utopian

The Trinamool Congress (TMC) has, however, dismissed the BJP’s claims as utopian, circulating a meme video on its X handle showing a boy saying, “Swapna dekhna achhi baat hai [it’s good to dream]”.

Party spokesperson Kunal Ghosh insisted that the Bihar election results were not indicative of the political scene in West Bengal, adding that the people of the state continue to support Mamata Banerjee’s government, which would return to power with a larger margin in next year’s assembly election.

Also read: Bihar elections: Nitish Kumar set to become India's longest-serving CM?

To counter the BJP’s narrative, the TMC also seized on Giriraj Singh’s comment, portraying it as an insult to Bengalis. “‘How dare Modi’s leader Giriraj Singh call Bengalis ‘Bangladeshi’ and ‘Rohingya’? It is an insult to crores of Bengalis,” fumed TMC Rajya Sabha member, Sagarika Ghose.

TMC could enjoy an edge

Beyond the rhetoric, political observers note that any party with stronger organisational machinery is better positioned to exploit the presence of alleged ‘fake’ voters.

In Bengal’s context, that advantage is believed to lie with the TMC. However, they caution that deleting a few lakh names from voter lists would not automatically translate into an electoral disadvantage for Bengal's ruling party.

“The SIR exercise in Bihar did not cause as much social upheaval as it has in Bengal. Around ten people have allegedly committed suicide due to SIR-related anxiety and fear. Besides, the exercise has sparked protests from civil society groups and hunger strikes by Matua community leaders,” pointed out political commentator and Commonwealth Fellow Debashis Chakrabarti.