The electoral impact of the Special Intensive Review (SIR) of the electoral register in West Bengal continues to energize political debate in the state. The arbitration phase of the SIR, which was unique to West Bengal, resulted in disproportionate deletions in Muslim-dominated areas and Assembly constituencies (ACs) in the state. Yesterday, these pages showed that the difference in absolute votes polled by the BJP and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) is similar to the total SIR deletions in the state is not convincing evidence that SIR helped the BJP win the West Bengal elections.
A deeper analysis of the election results provides further evidence that the obsession with attributing TMC’s loss to SIR is misplaced. In fact, Muslims on the electoral roll, rather than those who may have been disenfranchised by the SIR, may have played a greater role in the TMC’s poor performance this time around. Here’s how.
The first clue is the most obvious and was highlighted yesterday as well. The number of Muslim MLAs in the West Bengal Assembly remained almost unchanged. It was 44 in 2021 and has become 40 in 2026. However, what has changed significantly is the number of non-TMC, non-BJP Muslim MLAs. It was only one in 2021: the Left Front supported the Indian Secular Front candidate in Bhangar. The number rose to six in 2026: two from the Congress, two from the Aam Janata Unnayan Party floated by former TMC leader Humayun Kabir, one from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and one from the ISF-backed Left Front. The number of Muslims from the TMC decreased from 43 in 2021 to 34 in 2026. This suggests that non-TMC Muslim candidates have greater appeal to defeat the BJP in 2026 than in 2021. The BJP did not field any Muslim candidates in 2026.
The second piece of evidence is a broader measure of the segmentation of Muslim votes and looks at spoiler candidates. This analysis uses a relatively stringent criterion to identify a spoiler candidate: a third-place candidate who received more votes than the margin of victory. The number of spoiler candidates decreased from 118 in 2021 to 89 in 2026. However, the number of spoilers of which the junta was a victim (ranking second) remained unchanged at 43 in both 2021 and 2026. Even more telling is the fact that the number of Muslim spoiler candidates for the TMC rose from just two in 2021 to 11 in 2026. The number of non-Muslim spoiler candidates who damaged the BJP fell from 67 to 37 between 2021 and 2026. This was due to a significant decline in the number of non-Muslim spoiler candidates, from 59 in 2021 to 18 in 2026, despite the rise in the number of Muslim spoilers who cost the BJP victory from eight to 19.
The above figures support the conclusion from the first set of figures that the number of non-TCM and non-BJP Muslims will increase between 2021 and 2026. The number of local councils in which Muslims played a spoiler role increased – perhaps due to greater fragmentation of the Muslim vote – between 2021 and 2026.
The third piece of statistical evidence is the most convincing. Hizb ut-Tahrir compared the district-level vote share of BJP, TMC and non-BJP TMC candidates in the 2021 and 2026 elections. Because we do not have precise data on the religious breakdown of the population, this is the best proxy for comparing party performance by the religious composition of voters.
The BJP vote share shows a decline as one moves from areas with low to high Muslim population share in both 2021 and 2026. This makes sense given the assumption that Muslims do not vote for the BJP.
In 2021, the TMC vote share showed an increasing trend in areas with increasing proportion of Muslim population. But this will not hold in 2026. The TMC got its second lowest voter turnout in Murshidabad district, which has the highest Muslim population in the state. Is this a result of the deletion of Muslims under the SIR process?
Accepting this argument requires the final statistical examination by looking at the district-level vote share of non-BJP and non-TMC parties. It has been almost uniformly low and stable in the 2021 elections except in Darjeeling district. Darjeeling has the lowest proportion of Muslim population, but the TMC did field its candidates in most municipal councils in the district in 2021, and various regional groups supported the Gurkha.
In 2026, the non-TMC and non-BJP vote share and Muslim population share best fitting line shows an increasing trend with increasing Muslim population share. It is highest in Murshidabad district, where the TMC received its second lowest vote share. Five of the six non-TMC and non-BJP MLAs are from Murshidabad district. Murshidabad witnessed the highest proportional deletion of voters during the SIR segregation process, resulting in higher deletions in Muslim-dominated areas and AC districts, as we showed earlier.
Anyone reading the three groups mentioned here must admit that at least some of the Muslims who remained on the electoral roll have turned away from the TMC between 2021 and 2026, choosing an alternative other than the BJP. The reason for this cannot be the SIR and must be found in the TMC’s policies.
