The short answer: Probably not.
For the long answer: read on.
The above question is the most polarizing question that can be asked regarding the West Bengal results. Of the 14 states and union territories where the Election Commission of India (ECI) has conducted Special Intensive Review (SIR) or Special Review (SR) of electoral rolls since last year, six states/UTs conducted elections after this process. The SIR was the most controversial and perhaps inherently disenfranchising in West Bengal, where 2.7 million voters were removed from the rolls under the judicial separation process (and were awaiting their fate even on election day) as well as 6.2 million voters removed in the SIR regardless of the judicial separation category.
Regardless of the SIR’s constitutional and political moral problems, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could not have won West Bengal if the difficult electoral data was considered. Here is why.
The BJP and the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) (both with no allies during this analysis) have vote shares of 45.8% and 41.1% respectively in the 2026 Assembly elections as of 10pm.
Read also: Key points from the election results | Number theory
The BJP gained 7.1 percentage points in vote share and the TMC lost 4.7 percentage points compared to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the latest pre-SIR poll in the state. In absolute terms, the BJP got 5.6 million more votes while the TMC got 1.7 million fewer votes compared to the 2024 elections (according to Election Commission of India data as of 10 pm). The state’s net SIR deletions are 8.9 million, of which 2.7 million were deleted during the adjudication process. The drop in votes polled by TMC is at least close to the write-offs of judicial rulings, making it tempting to believe that SIR could have played a role in the BJP’s victory in West Bengal, as some analysts have already claimed. But is this really so? Answering this question requires reading the numbers in context.
Let’s look at them one by one.
Deciphering SIR’s influence beyond party strongholds
The TMC and its allies won 226, 211 and 215 constituencies in the 2011, 2016 and 2021 assembly elections in West Bengal. She won AC 124 consistently in all three of these elections. Because the AC boundaries were changed in the 2008 demarcation, it is impossible to take pre-2011 elections into account in this analysis.
Also Read: Deciphering the vote swing in Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam
In 2026, the TMC and its allies lost 78 of their 124 stronghold advisory councils (elections were postponed in one of those 124 advisory councils) and won only 34 outside this group of advisory councils.
The BJP won 121, 77 and 90 seats in the 2019, 2021 and 2024 elections, if the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha election results are divided into AC segments. It has won 54 seats in all these elections. In 2026, the BJP won all 54 parliamentary seats that it won in the 2019, 2021 and 2024 elections. She won 100% of the 142 electoral commissions she won in any of these elections. She added another 65 air conditioning units to her kit, which she had never won before.
If one is to truly understand the reversal of political fortunes in the state, one must examine the impact of the SIR on the state election results barring the 100 AC strongholds that remained with the TMC and the BJP in 2026.
How many of these electoral boards saw an absolute decline in turnout between 2024 and 2026? This is an important question to ask because SIR did not lead to an absolute decline in voter turnout between pre- and post-SIR elections in West Bengal, which was also the case in all states that conducted SIR and elections.
The answer to this question is 20 out of 100 (13 the BJP won continuously in 2019, 2021, 2024 and 2026; seven the TMC won continuously in 2011, 2016, 2021 and 2026) as of 10pm.
What about the extent to which voters in these committees are deleted due to SIR? The range is from only 2.1% to 38.6% with a median value of 9.5%. However, when it comes to tracking the change in vote shares of either TMC or BJP along with the proportion of SIR deletions, there seems to be no correlation between the two. (See charts 2a and 2b)
The impact of SIR on Muslim votes
What about the impact of community-biased deletions under SIR? The most damning indictment of the SIR process, and indeed its adjudication stage in West Bengal, was the disproportionately high share of deletions at the adjudication stage of cases in areas with a higher proportion of Muslim population in the state.
West Bengal had 39 electoral commissions that elected a Muslim MLA in the 2011, 2016 and 2021 assembly elections. 18 of these 39 districts were in areas with a Muslim population of 50% or more according to the 2011 census. 34 of these committees elected a Muslim MP this time as well. Five of them are actually non-TMC candidates.
The BJP won the remaining five. In three of them, another Muslim candidate played the role of spoiler for the TMC.
The number of Muslim MPs in the new West Bengal Assembly is 40. This is largely the same number in 2021. However, the share of Muslims in the TMC has risen to 42.5%.
This is a classic case of sectarian polarization – similar to what the Congress Party faced in Assam – and is not a direct result of electoral roll manipulation. The political trend of increasing the quota of Muslims in the Congress in Assam predates the delimitation and special revision of the lists. (See chart 3)
So what did West Bengal really win for the BJP?
The answer is a very strong anti-incumbency wave that has societal polarizing winds. Between 2021 and 2026, the TMC lost vote share in 268 out of 293 parliamentary committees for which votes were counted yesterday. In 69 of them, it lost more than 10 percentage points of the vote share. The BJP received vote share in 270 out of 293 parliamentary committees and more than 10 percentage points in 95.
What does this major shift in popular support entail? Historical comparison can help put things into perspective.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) led Left Front lost nearly 11 percentage points in vote share between its landslide victory in 2006 and landslide loss in 2011.
While mapping the swing by the AC side is not possible due to the shifting boundaries of the AC border, the TMC’s overall vote share loss of nearly 4.7 percentage points in 2026 is relatively small compared to the Left Front’s loss.
This is why it was able to maintain its seat share at a much higher level than the left in 2011.
The biggest problem facing the Transitional Military Council still lies ahead. What if it sees a mass exodus of remaining Hindu voters, whether to the BJP or to other opposition parties in the state, who will certainly be very critical of the TMC now that it has lost to the BJP. Politics is not over yet in West Bengal.
