The BJP sends its most feared fighter straight into Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s home seat of Bhabanipur. This makes the 2026 Bengal election the most explosive in ten years.
Kolkata—One list and one name set off a firestorm in Bengal’s political world. The BJP released its first list of 144 candidates for the upcoming 294-seat state assembly election on Sunday.
Deep in that list was the one announcement that will be the talk of the town from Bhabanipur to Nandigram: Suvendu Adhikari, Leader of the Opposition and the man who beat Mamata Banerjee in 2021, will run against her again, this time on her own turf.
Adhikari is running in Bhabanipur, which is the Kolkata constituency where Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has been based since she lost the Nandigram election and had to hold a by-election in 2021. The move is a direct provocation, a sign that the BJP, led by Prime Minister Modi, is not just running against Bengal. It wants to get Mamata Banerjee’s head.
But the list is much longer than Bhabanipur. Dilip Ghosh, the former president of the BJP in West Bengal, is back in Kharagpur Sadar, the constituency he knows best. Swapan Dasgupta, an intellectual and former Rajya Sabha MP, is running for the culturally important Kolkata seat of Rashbehari. The new party state president, Shamik Bhattacharya, is in charge in Rajahat Gopalpur, and the women’s candidate, Sumita Sinha, is running against the TMC in coastal Kanthi Uttar.
The first list focuses a lot on the swing districts in south Bengal. This is a deliberate move to keep Mamata Banerjee’s TMC out of its comfort zone in the state’s most populous and vote-rich area. Party sources say that a big PM Modi rally is being planned in Kolkata for the last stretch of the campaign, which will add national firepower to an already heated race.
The Bhabanipur challenge is the most painful political blow for Mamata Banerjee. She lost Nandigram to Adhikari in 2021, but she stayed in power through a by-election in Bhabanipur. In a full general election, not a quiet by-election, she has to fight for her life in her own seat. This is a whole different kind of stress. It takes away Mamata Banerjee’s personal campaign time, resources, and attention from the bigger fight.
There are still 150 seats to be filled, and voting will take place on April 23 and 29. Sunday’s list is just the first step. But it has already done its job: it has cast doubt where there was once certainty and turned Bengal’s 2026 election into a race where even Mamata Banerjee can’t take her own constituency for granted.
