4 min readMay 30, 2026 12:36 PM IST
First published on: May 30, 2026 at 12:36 PM IST
In the recent West Bengal Assembly elections, of the Trinamool Congress (TMC)’s 36 most prominent leaders, including ex-Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, state ministers, and the Assembly Speaker, only 14 managed to win their seats and 9 lost in their booths in their own wards.
Booth-level data published by the West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) shows the extent of the TMC’s defeat at the hands of the BJP, which secured an outright majority for the first time in state history this year. Not only did a majority of sitting ministers, including Mamata herself, lose from seats that were once considered TMC strongholds, 16 senior TMC leaders managed to win in just one-third or fewer polling booths in their seats.
In Bhabanipur, for instance, where Mamata had won in a 2021 bypoll, she managed to win just 62 of the 270 polling booths, or 22.96%, against CM Suvendu Adhikari of the BJP. In Mamata’s home polling station No. 207, she won with a 63.33% vote share. But Adhikari was able to win as many as 197 booths with at least 50% of the vote share, including 44 booths with more than 80% vote share, en route to defeating the TMC supremo for the second consecutive Assembly election. Mamata, on the other hand, secured more than 50% of the vote share in just 54 booths, including 43 with more than 80% vote share.
Four TMC ministers – Sujit Bose, Bratya Basu, Chandrima Bhattacharya, and Pradip Mazumdar – won less than 15% of the total polling booths in their seats. All four lost their seats to a BJP candidate. In another 8 seats, a senior TMC leader lost after winning between 30% and 40% of the total polling stations. In Hemtabad, Satyajit Barman lost to the BJP despite winning 45.2% of all polling booths, including 39.15% of booths with more than 50% of the vote share.
Just three TMC ministers – Md Ghulam Rabbani, Akhruzzaman, and Sabina Yeasmin – won more than 80% of the polling stations in their seats. In another 11 seats, a senior TMC leader won between 35.95% and 69.25% of the total booths en route to winning their seats.
Of the 36 TMC leaders, 25 are registered as voters in the constituencies they contested, while the remaining 11 are registered elsewhere. Among these 25, just 9 won in their home polling stations, of whom 6 ultimately lost their seats and 3 won. Among the 16 senior TMC leaders who won their home polling booths, just 6 went on to win their seats.
Among the 14 senior TMC leaders who won their seats, just 4 secured at least 50% of the vote share in their seats. In Goalpokhar, Rabbani won 83.88% of the booths with at half the total votes — the highest among these senior leaders. But in Madhyamgram, Rathin Ghosh won his seat by securing more than half the vote share in just 17.65% of the total booths. Among the 22 seats where a senior TMC leader was ousted, there were 15 seats where the BJP won despite securing at least a 50% vote share in less than 30% of the total booths. In Dum Dum Uttar, for instance, the BJP’s Sourav Sikdar defeated former finance minister Chandrima Bhattacharya despite winning more than 50% of the vote share in just 3.78% of all polling booths.
Among the 22 seats where a senior TMC leader lost, the BJP candidate had a 10-percentage point gap to the TMC candidate in more than half the total polling booths in 16 seats.
The TMC’s 14 prominent winners include ex-Speaker Chandranath Sinha in Bolpur, who trailed the BJP candidate by more than 10 percentage points in vote share in 54.98% of all polling stations and still won the seat. In Uluberia Dakshin, too, the TMC’s Pulak Roy trailed the BJP candidate by more than 10 percentage points in vote share in half of the seat’s polling booths but still managed to win the constituency. The TMC’s most dominant wins came in Goalpokhar and Sujapur, where Rabbani and Yeasmin had a vote share gap of at least 10-percentage points to the BJP in just 13.64% and 8.92% of the total polling booths, respectively.
Booth-level data from the West Bengal Assembly elections highlights the extent of the TMC’s decline, with several senior leaders losing in their own wards and many failing to dominate even traditional strongholds. (File Photo) 
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