West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday lost to Bharatiya Janata Party’s Suvendu Adhikari in the Bhabanipur constituency in the 2026 Assembly elections.
Banerjee lost by more than 15,000 votes, according to Election Commission data. She was briefly leading earlier in the day.
Adhikari also won in Nandigram against Trinamool Congress’ Pabitra Kar by more than 9,600 votes.
Nandigram was the high-profile contest between Banerjee and Adhikari in the 2021 Assembly elections as well, when the two faced each other directly and the BJP leader had defeated her.
Following that loss, the chief minister had been elected to the Assembly through a bye-election victory in Bhabanipur later that year. Banerjee had represented the seat since 2011, barring that brief interval in 2021.
Adhikari, once a close aide of Banerjee, had joined the BJP in 2020 and is currently the Leader of Opposition in the Assembly.
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Both seats have also been under scrutiny in discussions around electoral roll revisions. Analyses by Sabar Institute, a Kolkata-based research organisation, have highlighted significant patterns in deletion of Muslims during the special intensive revision process.
In Nandigram, although Muslims make up only 25% of the population, they accounted for 95.5% of the deletions in seven supplementary lists released by the Election Commission.
In Bhabanipur, more than 40% of the voters deleted during adjudication as part of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls were Muslims, even though the community comprises only about 20% of the population in the constituency.
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The BJP on Monday defeated the TMC. As of 9.45 pm, the BJP was leading in or had won 207 seats and the TMC in 80.
A party or an alliance needs 148 seats in the 294-member Assembly to secure a majority.
Polling was held in two phases on April 23 and April 29 with a record provisional voter turnout of 92.4%.
However, votes in 293 constituencies are being counted on Monday as the Election Commission has ordered repolling in the Falta Assembly seat citing “severe electoral offences”. The polling there will be held on May 21 and the votes will be counted on May 24.
On Saturday, repolling had also been held in 15 booths in the Diamond Harbour and Magrahat constituencies following reports from election officials and observers, and “material circumstances”.
The exit polls had forecast mixed results, with some predicting a win for the ruling Trinamool Congress and others for the BJP. Banerjee claimed that the exit polls were “fabricated” and meant to demoralise her party’s supporters.
The TMC has been in power since 2011. The main Opposition in the state over the years has shifted from the Left Front to the BJP.
Follow Scroll’s coverage of the 2026 West Bengal Assembly elections here.
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