“Jotoi Koro Hamla, Abar Jitne Bangla" (No matter how much you attack, Bengal will win again) is Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP's motto of his nearly month-long poll campaign, which kickstarted on Friday from Baruipur in South 24 Parganas district.
While for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the emphasis is on illegal infiltration, taking the focus away from Special Intensive Revision (SIR), TMC continues to harp on the authenticity of the rushed poll revision process packed into three months, with the fear of legitimate voters being left out. "Who will take the responsibility for the deaths that have happened due to unplanned SIR? Even today, one lady from Bardhamman Dakshin has died. She committed suicide. She was called for the SIR hearing on the fifth. In the name of logical discrepancies, 1.36 crore people are being sent notices to attend SIR hearings," said Abhishek Banerjee.
The 2002 SIR in the state took two years to complete, which the TMC says led to the death of several citizens, fearing their names would be left out of the final list, and Booth-Level Officers (BLO) who died as they were unable to take the pressure. TMC delegations have met West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Manoj Agarwal and Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyaneshwar Bharati over the harassment of people in the enumeration phase and deletion of names of genuine voters, many of whom have been marked as dead voters in the draft SIR list released on December 16, 2025.
"The day before yesterday, we visited the Election Commission’s office in Delhi. I asked Gyanesh Kumar to publish the list of Bangladeshi whose names have been deleted. He could not do it. Instead, he was raising his finger towards me. You (Gyanesh Kumar) are nominated, we are elected," added the TMC Diamond Harbour MP, who also said that Mamata Banerjee will reach Delhi too in the coming days to protect genuine voters harassed by the SIR issue.
The BJP, time and again, reiterates that Mamata’s victory is due to a huge chunk of voters being illegal infiltrators from Bangladesh, with Union Home Minister Amit Shah declaring that every illegal voter will be pushed out of the state when the saffron party comes to power. Shah set the tone for an aggressive campaign ahead of the top leadership embarking on mission Bengal with his three-day visit to Kolkata earlier this week and outreach to party workers as a sign, that the BJP means serious business in defeating the ruling party.
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The TMC, on the other hand, is confident of winning more seats in West Bengal in the 2026 Assembly polls, and the BJP too is confident of winning a two-third majority with a confident Shah declaring that the saffron party will form the next government in the state in April 2026.
"I said two months ago that despite SIR, AITC’s seats will increase in the 2026 Assembly polls. If the BJP has the guts, they should challenge me. Nobody has stopped them. Why are they so afraid?" challenged Banerjee. The TMC won 215 seats and came to power for a third time in the state, while the BJP won seventeen seats in the eight-phase Assembly elections in 2021. Banerjee is confident that this time the party will win at least one more seat than the last time.
The new year begins with Mamata’s nephew setting the tone for an aggressive SIR fight from one district to another, with his campaign moving next to Alipurduar in North Bengal, Birbhum, Uttar Dinajpur, Dakshin Dinajpur and Malda until January 22. The fight for survival versus an anti-incumbency vote, in whose favour will the balance tilt?