The Ganga’s journey from Bihar into West Bengal is not merely the movement of a river; it is the movement of a political tide. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi invoked this symbolic imagery on the day of the Bihar results, he was not indulging in a poetic flourish. He was signalling a deliberate and long-prepared shift of political energy from Bihar to Bengal, a current that has been flowing eastward well before votes were even cast in Patna.
For the BJP, Bihar’s mandate of 202 of 243 seats for the NDA was not an end but a beginning. It provided momentum, confidence, and, more importantly, a strategic blueprint for the bigger battle ahead. Unlike in 2021, when the saffron party let overconfidence overshadow organisational rigour, the BJP of 2025 is patient, methodical, hungry, and prepared.
Amit Shah’s increased presence in Kolkata, the ongoing mobilisation of booth committees across nearly 70,000 polling stations, and the establishment of a five-zone organisational structure demonstrate one clear reality: the BJP never intended to wait for Bihar’s verdict to launch its Bengal offensive. The battle for Bengal began months ago.
Modi’s Ganga metaphor, therefore, was not celebratory; it was declaratory.
The Bihar Template and the Message to Bengal
The NDA’s spectacular showing in Bihar also shook up long-standing equations within the state. For the first time, the BJP decisively overshadowed the JD(U) and emerged as the single-largest party. But the deeper lesson lies in the NDA’s social outreach, especially towards women. The Mukhya Mantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana, under which 1.5 crore women received a direct grant of ₹10,000, has now become emblematic of targeted welfare with political precision.
Its success is a message to Bengal: the BJP can match and even outdo the TMC’s welfare-driven politics if required. And unlike the TMC, it can tie welfare to governance, security, and accountability issues that matter deeply to West Bengal’s voters but have long been neglected.
Bengal’s Unique Battlefield
Yet, Bengal’s political terrain demands more than Bihar-style welfare. West Bengal is a state grappling with a demographic crisis, illegal immigration, and a ruling dispensation that refuses even to acknowledge the scale of the problem.
The numbers speak plainly. Between 2023 and March 2025, over 5,000 Bangladeshi nationals attempting to infiltrate India were apprehended by the Border Security Force. West Bengal alone accounted for 2,688 of these cases, the highest among all border states. Even more tellingly, in just three days in November, 94 Bangladeshis were arrested while attempting to return home through Basirhat.
Why The Sudden Exodus?
The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
The SIR requires nearly two crore voters to verify their lineage with reference to the 2002 voter list. Add to this UIDAI’s recent deactivation of 34 lakh Aadhaar numbers belonging to deceased persons in Bengal, and the panic among illegal migrants becomes understandable.
This is not fear of persecution. It is the fear of exposure.
By mid-November, over 500 undocumented Bangladeshi nationals were detained at Hakimpur. Locals report that the actual number of illegal migrants fleeing the state is in the thousands.
The BJP has long alleged that West Bengal’s electoral rolls are contaminated. The SIR is proving them right.
Predictably, the TMC has opposed the exercise at every step, as if cleansing the voter list were a political threat rather than an administrative responsibility. The ruling party’s refusal to provide land for border fencing over the years has only deepened suspicions.
The demographic transformation of West Bengal is undeniable. The Muslim population rose from 19.85% in 1951 to 27% in 2011. In Murshidabad, it stands at 66.3%; in Malda, at 51.3%. Mamata Banerjee herself has admitted that the minority population now stands at 33%.
Experts across the board acknowledge what the TMC refuses to say aloud: infiltration from Bangladesh has contributed significantly to this shift.
Violence as a Political Tool
Bengal’s political culture adds another layer of complexity. Violence is not an aberration here; it is an institution.
In 2021, the state saw large-scale post-election violence resulting in judicial supervision and court-mandated FIRs. The 2018 panchayat elections were even worse, with opposition candidates unable to file nominations in 34% of seats. Unsurprisingly, the TMC won one-third of the seats uncontested.
(The writer is a technocrat, political analyst, and author)
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In 2025, clashes over the Waqf Amendment Act in Murshidabad resulted in three deaths and more than 200 arrests.
For a party plotting its return to power, the BJP knows that victory in Bengal is as much about dismantling the machinery of intimidation as it is about winning votes.
BJP’s Multi-Layered Bengal Strategy
Learning from the 2021 miscalculations, the BJP has crafted a three-pronged strategy:
- Wooing Non-Muslim Minorities: Christians, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, and others together form a critical bloc of around 25 lakh voters. The BJP plans to build a strong outreach effort toward these groups, which have often felt politically invisible between Hindu majoritarian narratives and TMC’s Muslim-oriented appeasement politics.
- Narrative Control: This time, the BJP intends to frame the campaign around illegal immigration, security, governance, corruption, and economic stagnation, forcing the TMC onto the defensive.
- Dossier-Driven Poll Management: The BJP has prepared detailed profiles of TMC’s local strongmen, the enforcers who influence booth-level intimidation. By mapping these networks, the party aims to counter their influence through both political and legal means.
Further, over 50,000 booth-level agents have been deployed for the SIR process. Of the state’s 91,000 booths, committees have been formed in nearly 70,000. Senior leaders from around the country have been assigned to specific zones: Kolkata, Nabadwip, Howrah-Hooghly-Midnapore, North Bengal, and the Rarh region.
This is not a party prepared at the last minute. This is a party executing a campaign architecture built months in advance.
The TMC’s Weak Spots: Dynasty and Discontent
The TMC enters the 2025 elections with a structural vulnerability: dynastic succession. Abhishek Banerjee, the party’s national general secretary and Mamata Banerjee’s nephew, is widely acknowledged as her successor, despite her cultivated vagueness on the matter. TMC leaders openly talk about him as the future chief minister.
For a party built on anti-establishment rhetoric, this drift into dynastic politics is a gift to the BJP.
Equally concerning is West Bengal’s economic situation. Despite a 6.8% GSDP growth in 2024–25 and the government’s claim of 4.14% unemployment, urban youth unemployment hit 17.9% in May 2025.
Discontent is visible, especially on social media, where anti-TMC content is flooding Bengali digital spaces. BJP leaders privately say their internal target is 160 seats, a number that, if achieved, would fundamentally reshape Bengal’s political trajectory.
The Ganga Has Begun Its Journey
Modi’s line “Ganga flows from Bihar to Bengal” is not a metaphor anymore. It is a political roadmap.
The BJP that swept Bihar is the same BJP that began preparing for Bengal early, quietly, and relentlessly. The organisation is deeper, the strategy sharper, and the arithmetic clearer.
The only unanswered question now is this: Will Bengal’s voters, weary of illegal immigration, demographic imbalance, political violence, and dynastic rule, choose to complete the journey that the Ganga has already begun?