West Bengal Elections: TMC out of power, but why Abhishek Banerjee could still rise after Mamata’s fall?

The BJP appears set to script electoral history in West Bengal, with the state on track to see its first saffron government since Independence as the Trinamool Congress faces the prospect of a major defeat after 15 years in power.

The election, held in the backdrop of a record voter deletion exercise under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), has emerged as one of the most consequential political contests in the state’s recent history.

The 2026 West Bengal elections have been distinct in their intensity and structure, effectively reducing the contest to a binary fight between the ruling TMC and an assertive BJP seeking its first full-term mandate in the state.


Amid this high-stakes political churn and a fiercely polarised contest that has dominated the electoral landscape, attention has also increasingly turned towards the internal power centres within the Trinamool Congress and the evolving role of its next-generation leadership.


TMC's all-out campaign

The TMC poured everything into this battle. As reported in ANI, Abhishek Banerjee publicly declared that the BJP had "fallen flat on their faces in 2012, 2021, and 2024," promising the same result in 2026, and vowing that Bengal would "defeat the BJP lock, stock and barrel."

The Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls became one of the central controversies of the campaign, removing around 9 million voters from the rolls which account for roughly 12% of the electorate. TMC accused the exercise of deleting genuine voters.

As reported in ANI, Abhishek Banerjee went so far as to promise that if TMC won, every name removed from the voter list would be restored, asserting that the 63% of deleted names belonging to Hindus could not all be "Bangladeshis or Rohingya" as BJP implied.

Abhishek's stamp on the campaign trail

The scale of TMC's campaign footprint, led substantially by Abhishek Banerjee, was massive. His influence on the 2026 candidate list was unmistakable, featuring 130 candidates under the age of 50, signalling a bold generational transition. As reported in TOI, to manage anti-incumbency, the party denied tickets to 74 sitting MLAs while retaining veteran loyalists.

As reported in ANI, Opposition leader Suvendu Adhikari himself acknowledged Abhishek's aggressive canvassing, quipping, "The more he campaigns, the more he will lose the election,” a jibe that, inadvertently, underscored just how central Abhishek had become to the battle.

What now?

Even a crushing defeat of TMC may not diminish Abhishek Banerjee's standing. As the TMC's National General Secretary, a three-term MP from Diamond Harbour, and the number two of the party.

The organisational grip that outlasts any result

Just days before the counting, Abhishek held a virtual meeting with all counting agents and party stakeholders statewide. This in a way demonstrates the scale of his grip over the party's on-ground machinery. That kind of organisational authority doesn't evaporate with an election result.

Even if the party loses, Abhishek Banerjee is likely to emerge as a more assertive and combative political force. He could become the face of a TMC rebuilding itself for the next Lok Sabha cycle and beyond. He has been an MP since 2014 and became General Secretary of the TMC in 2021, and his political identity is no longer just an extension of Mamata Banerjee’s legacy, but he has built his own.

The narrative that transcends elections

He has consistently urged Bengalis to unite beyond party lines, projecting himself as a defender of Bengali identity and dignity against what he frames as BJP's attempts to "label Bengalis as Bangladeshis."

If TMC loses power, Abhishek Banerjee might still matter in Bengal politics. That, in the grander scale of Bengal’s politics has already been settled.