Mamata Banerjee vs Suvendu Adhikari in Bhabanipur today: What's at stake for TMC, BJP in ‘mother of all’ Bengal battles

Bhabanipur, Kolkata: On 27 April, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee stepped out of her convoy and walked up to the vegetable vendors in her home constituency of Bhabanipur in South Kolkata on her way back from a political rally.

Mamata Banerjee's stop at a vegetable vendor's stall was reminiscent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi taking a 'jhalmuri' break during his campaign trail last week in poll-bound West Bengal.

Bhabanipur votes, along with 141 other seats, in the second and final phase of the West Bengal assembly election today, 29 April. The first phase of voting for 152 seats in West Bengal was held on 23 April. The results will be declared on 4 May.

Bhabanipur is not just an ordinary contest in West Bengal, where elections are largely seen as a bipolar contest between the ruling TMC and the opposition BJP. The seat is Mamata Banerjee's home turf, and that is precisely why the BJP chose it as a strategic seat, fielding its heavyweight Suvendu Adhikari from here.

Adhikar also contesting from Nandigram, where he defeated Mamata Banerjee in 2021. Nandigram voted in the first phase.

By fielding him from Bhabanipur this time, the BJP has turned the contest into ‘mother of all battles,’ according to Kolkata-based senior journalist Suvojit Bagchi.

"Mamata Banerjee is a three-term chief minister. And Adhikari, the Leader of Opposition and a BJP heavyweight, is contesting against her. It has certainly become the mother of all battles in the West Bengal polls. Adhikari is, after all, the de facto face of BJP in West Bengal,” Bagchi told this reporter in Kolkata.

‘Mini India’ Bhabanipur is Nandigram 2.0, and how

In a way, Bhabanipur is a symbolic rematch of Nandigram, where Adhikari defeated Banerjee, his once political mentor, in 2021. Adhikari had quit the TMC and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party a year before.

The contest in Bhabanipur is a critical fight for both the TMC and the BJP. For the TMC, the contest is a prestige battle for the chief minister and party supremo's authority in her stronghold. For the BJP, Adhikari in particular, defeating Mamata in her own backyard would send out a strong message, for it is virtually a Mamata vs TMC fight.

Bhabanipur is often called ‘mini India’. It is an urban constituency where Bengalis coexist with Gujarati traders, Punjabi and Sikh households, Marwari and Jain families, alongside a sizeable Muslim electorate. One can see Migrants from Bihar, Odisha and Jharkhand driving taxis here. While there is a Punjabi dhaba, there are also shops selling Banarasi cuisine.

Campaigning for Mamata Banerjee this week, TMC MP Saayoni Ghosh described Bhabanipur as ‘a mini India.’ The former actor was seen invoking verses from Hindu, Islamic and Sikh religions in a now-viral video clip.

Around 42% of voters in Bhabanipur are Bengali Hindus, 34% are non-Bengali Hindus, and nearly 24% are Muslims.

“If you ask people in the Khidirpur area, the voters will swear by Mamata Banerjee. But then there are non-Bengali Hindus too, who would support the BJP. The Bhabanipur seat has a socially diverse population. That is precisely why BJP fielded Adhikari against Banerjee here,” Dr Mohammad Reyaz, assistant professor at the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Aliah University, told LiveMint in Kolkata.

Once a Congress citadel represented by heavyweights like Siddhartha Shankar Ray, Bhabanipur disappeared after delimitation in 1972 and was revived only in 2011, the year Banerjee ended the Left Front's 34-year rule.

Bhabanipur has been a TMC stronghold since 2011. Mamata Banerjee's close aide Subrata Bakshi first won the seat, vacated it, and Banerjee entered the assembly through the bypoll that effectively became her coronation as an MLA after being sworn in as chief minister. She retained the seat in 2016.

In 2021, she shifted to Nandigram but, after losing to Suvendu Adhikari by 1,956 votes, returned to the assembly through the Bhabanipur bypoll, defeating BJP's Priyanka Tibrewal by more than 58,000 votes.

That history explains why, within the TMC, Bhabanipur is viewed not merely as a safe seat but as Banerjee's political insurance. Her Kalighat residence lies within the constituency, and long before it became her assembly fortress, its lanes and community clubs were central to her rise from Kolkata South MP to Bengal's most dominant politician.

"This is not just another seat. People here have repeatedly stood by Mamata Banerjee's politics of development and inclusiveness," Kolkata Mayor and senior TMC leader Firhad Hakim told news agency PTI.

The TMC has also revived the emotional pitch of "ghorer meye" – the daughter of the house. The campaign is designed less around aggression and more around familiarity - Banerjee not as the chief minister, but as the neighbourhood's own Didi. Welfare schemes such as Lakshmir Bhandar, Kanyashree and social security for women remain central to that appeal.

The BJP, however, believes the ground has shifted. A BJP worker tells me at the party's camp office here that people in the seat have made up their mind. “The TMC is frustrated. They have been damaging our hoardings and posters. They can see a defeat coming their way in this seat and across West Bengal,” the worker says.

BJP depends on booth-level caste arithmetic

The BJP's strategy rests on booth-level caste arithmetic, consolidation of Hindu votes across Bengali and non-Bengali communities, and turning Bhabanipur into a psychological contest through Adhikari's candidature.

“The battle here cannot be fought with one slogan. It has to be fought booth by booth, community by community. The state now wants Ram Rajya. People are tired of appeasement politics,” BJP leader Debjit Sarkar told the news agency.

The BJP also draws confidence from electoral trends. It had shown signs of growth in Bhabanipur as early as the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections, and even won Banerjee's own Kolkata Municipal Corporation Ward 73 in 2014.

The trend sharpened in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, when the TMC's lead in the Bhabanipur assembly segment fell sharply to just 8,297 votes, compared to Banerjee's 58,832-vote margin in the 2021 bypoll. Significantly, the BJP finished ahead in five of the constituency's eight wards, while the TMC led in only three.

The SIR of electoral rolls has added another strategic layer as its electorate shrank sharply to 1,55,291, with over 51,000 names deleted. Of these deletions, 23.3% are Muslims and 76.7% non-Muslims, TMC leaders maintained.

Manohar Mondal, now in his late 60s, has been looking after Bhabanipur’s Netaji Bhawan—a heritage building preserved as a memorial and research centre dedicated to the life of anti-colonial nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose—for nearly three decades.

In the beginning, Mondal says the Trinamool Congress candidate—and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee—is likely to retain the high-profile Bhabanipur seat in south Kolkata.

But as Mondal warms to the conversation, he invokes a word that has been echoing across Bengal ahead of the polls: “People want poribortan—a change this time,” he says in Bengali.

Will there be ‘poribortan’ in Bengal, or not? Results on 4 May will reveal.

(With agency inputs)