Daily Briefing: Bengal on edge as EVM tampering allegations trigger political showdown

With that, let’s move on to the top stories from today’s edition:

• TMC vs BJP continues in Bengal
• Ruchir Sharma explains BJP’s dominance
• RCB’s first all-out session in IPL 2026

🚨 Big Story

High drama unfolded in Kolkata on Thursday night when Trinamool Congress (TMC) candidates Kunal Ghosh and Shashi Panja, along with other workers alleged EVM tampering. They also sat on a dharna at the Khudiram Anushilan Kendra near Netaji Indoor Stadium. The move comes after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee appealed to her party to guard the EVM strong rooms. The CM also reached one of these rooms in Bhabanipur constituency to keep a vigil. On May 4, the day of counting, the EVMs will be brought to the counting centres.

Contrast: Bengal’s political landscape remained sharply polarised on Thursday with BJP workers celebrating buoyed by favourable exit polls, while the TMC struck a note of caution, mobilising cadres to guard counting centres and strongrooms amid allegations of irregularities. Most TMC offices in the state remained either closed or operated briefly in the evening. According to party leaders, this was part of a deliberate strategy to avoid vulnerability following alleged intimidation by central forces.

Impact: This time, the elections in West Bengal stood out for two reasons: one, a new criterion of ‘logical discrepancies’ that deleted 27.16 lakh names from electoral roll, and two, a record turnout of 92.95% which saw 31 lakh more votes polled compared with 2021. In 48 out of 96 seats, the number of voters, however, was lower than in 2021. These account for 28% of the total 27.16 lakh deletions. This suggests that the Special Intensive Revision could have had an impact on the number of voters who turned out. Here’s our analysis.

⚡ Only in Express

In her weekly column, Neerja Chowdhury delves into the position of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in West Bengal as voting in the second and final phase ended on Wednesday. She suggests that the party “may be on the cusp of a breakthrough in Bengal.” As the BJP brass banks on jobs, and tries to paint Mamata Banerjee as an appeaser of Muslims, Chowdhury writes: “The BJP has worked hard to put itself in a position that Vajpayee dreamt of, painstakingly putting in place an organisational structure in which five-member Mandal Shakti Kendras help booth-level mobilisation. Some, however, feel it is still not as organisationally strong as the TMC.”

📰 From the Front Page

Scam: About 960 farmers were listed as beneficiaries in Badoda tehsil, with a modest Rs 2,40,68,720 allocated as compensation for the floods that hit Madhya Pradesh in 2021. However, less than 30 lakh meant for 133 reached the beneficiaries. According to investigators, much of the money found its way into 127 bank accounts held by people with no connection to the flood victims. The case is now again in the limelight following the arrest of a tehsildar, Amita Singh Tomar, a key accused in the case, who gained fame in 2019 after winning Rs 50 lakh on Amitabh Bachchan’s Kaun Banega Crorepati.

Rupee falls: The rupee fell past the 95-per-dollar mark on Thursday, heading towards hitting a new all-time low of 95.34-per-dollar amid fresh concerns about the West Asia war propelling global crude oil prices to a four-year high. Domestic stock markets also behaved similarly, with Nifty and Sensex falling as much as 1.6% during the day before closing 0.75% lower. Investors were apprehensive as Brent crude oil prices surged to $126 per barrel, after worries mounted that the conflict could escalate after reports emerged that United States President Donald Trump would be briefed on “new plans for potential military action” in Iran.

About three years after Haryana began a push for investment opportunities in Tanzania, the state government has now started identifying nearly one lakh acres in the East African country for its farmers to pursue agricultural ventures. Tanzania’s fertile soil, climatic conditions, cheap availability of land, direct maritime routes, are some of the reasons for the state to zoom in on the country. According to a senior government official, an MoU is also being planned to formalise the cooperation. Read the full story here.

📌 Must Read

Global investor and author Ruchir Sharma explains that a feature of Indian politics that allows the BJP to remain a dominant force is that the party faces no competition on the Right. Pointing out that the TMC faces opposition from smaller parties such as All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), or All India Secular Front, in West Bengal, the BJP has no such competition. While the BJP or its alliance’s vote share is never more than 50%, Sharma said that the rest of the votes get “split all over the place,” he explains. Read the full article here.

Urgency: While the number of tigers in Madhya Pradesh crosses the 1,000-mark, the state has approached the Dehradun-based Wildlife Institute of India (WII) to assess how many tigers its forests can hold. Between 2014 and 2022, the state saw 155% jump, from 308 to 785. However, more tigers also means more conflict. Even though the state has fared better, retaliatory killings of tigers by electrocution to avenge loss of livestock, and attacks on humans, are on the rise. The urgency poses the uncomfortable question: how many tigers are too many for Madhya Pradesh.

In our Opinion section today, Arvind P Datar dives deeper into the irrationality and constitutional permissibility of the Maharashtra government’s directive to taxi and autorickshaw drivers to be proficient in Marathi. Datar writes: “Our states must not take decisions that weaken the Indian or Bharatiya identity or make it difficult for persons in one state to migrate to and work in another state. We have an ambitious plan for a Viksit Bharat@2047. To achieve it, we must not take steps that lead to a vibhajit Bharat or a divided India.”

⏳ And Finally…

🏏Gujarat Titans’ victory on Thursday was a result of an accumulation of “Shubman Gill’s 43 in 18 balls, Jos Buttler’s four sixes in the Powerplay, Rahul Tewatia’s calm at the death, and through it all, Jason Holder standing on the field, arms aloft, slowly turning to the crowd,” writes Sriram Veera. As GT dismissed Royal Challengers Bengaluru, in merely 155 runs and its first all-out session, it was difficult for the latter to recover from the middle-over carnage that Holder and Rashid Khan visited upon them.

🎧 Lastly, don’t forget to tune in to today’s episode of our 3 Things podcast, where we discuss Iran’s weaponization of the Strait of Hormuz that has jeopardized global oil supplies. We also talk about the heatwaves in India that signal the kind of summer we are likely to witness this year; as well as the ongoing investigation by the Gujarat police involving a woman who went missing in 1992.

That’s all for today. Have a wonderful day!

Until next time,
Ariba

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