Bengal's Muslim Vote Splinters as Opposition Fragments Ahead of Bypolls

No account of West Bengal's electoral arithmetic is complete without the Muslim vote. The community made up 27 per cent of the state's population at the last census and is now widely estimated to be close to 30 per cent. For three decades, its support determined who governed from the Writers' Building.

Under Congress rule, Muslims could turn to the Left. Under the Left, they could look to Mamata Banerjee. Under the Trinamool Congress, the Congress and the Left remained alternatives. That door was never fully shut. The Bharatiya Janata Party's rise has changed the calculation, because Muslims in Bengal, as elsewhere, do not vote for the BJP in numbers that can alter a seat's outcome.

A Split That Suits the BJP

The BJP's preferred arithmetic is a Hindu vote consolidated behind one address and a Muslim vote divided among multiple claimants. That is now the reality in Bengal. The Muslim vote is scattered among Mamata Banerjee's diminished Trinamool, the rebel legislature group led by Ritabrata Banerjee, the Congress, the Left, Humayun Kabir's Aam Janata Unnayan Party, and smaller outfits. As long as this fragmentation holds, no opposition party can assemble a majority.

The by-elections in Nandigram and Rejinagar on October 6 — the first since Suvendu Adhikari became the state's first BJP chief minister — will not change the government. They will indicate whether the split is hardening. Rejinagar, in Murshidabad, has a Muslim majority well above 65 per cent. Nandigram is not a Muslim-majority seat in the same sense but has a significant Muslim population and is the Adhikari family's stronghold.

From 75 Per Cent to Fragmentation

In 2021, Muslim voters were the Trinamool's strongest pillar. CSDS-Lokniti put the community's support for the party at 75 per cent, up from 70 per cent in 2019 and 51 per cent in 2016. Where Muslims exceeded 30 per cent of the population, the Trinamool swept Murshidabad, Malda, Uttar Dinajpur, South 24 Parganas and Birbhum. Fear of the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens locked that alignment, and a 215-seat majority was built on one community voting as one.

In 2026, that monopoly broke. The Trinamool fell from 215 seats to 80, while the BJP rose to 207 and formed the government. The sharpest shifts occurred in Murshidabad, Malda and Uttar Dinajpur. Beldanga offers the clearest picture: Muslims are estimated at around 63 per cent of the seat. In 2021, the Trinamool took more than 55 per cent; in 2026, its share fell to 26.1 per cent. AJUP polled 20.4 per cent, the Congress 17.5 per cent, and the BJP won with 31.9 per cent. The BJP did not need the Muslim vote — only for the others to split it.

The pattern repeated across the district. In Rejinagar and Nowda, AJUP pushed the Trinamool into third place and won both seats. The Congress took Farakka and Raninagar, and the CPI(M) returned through Domkal. In Jalangi, the Trinamool's lead fell from more than 79,000 votes in 2021 to about 21,500 in 2026. Fragmentation, not a sudden Muslim embrace of the BJP, explains the fall from 215 to 80.

Mamata's Declining Grip

Mamata Banerjee remains the most recognised opposition face in Bengal, but recognition is not the same as trust. She is 71, and the organisation that once carried her from village to village is slower now. After May 4, she lost Bhabanipur, the seat she treated as home, to Suvendu Adhikari. A party built around one face discovered that the face could lose and the machine could not hold.

What followed was a break into three camps: the rump around Mamata and her nephew Abhishek Banerjee, still claiming authority from Kalighat; the legislature majority that moved to Ritabrata Banerjee, with more than 50 of the 80 Trinamool MLAs now recognised as the official opposition; and the Lok Sabha MPs who left for the Nationalist Citizens Party of India. Committees were dissolved, councillors peeled away, and the Election Commission froze the party name and the two flowers on grass. For the first time since 1998, she does not undisputedly own the symbol she invented.

The Muslim vote did not abandon her on counting day. It had been leaving through the school job scandal, municipal contracts, and a sense that protection had become a rent. In 2021, Muslims gave her 75 per cent because they feared the BJP more than they disliked her government. By 2026, the fear remained but the trust did not. Four months is not enough time to recover from that.

Rebel Faction and Congress Prospects

The rebel bloc led by Ritabrata Banerjee holds more than 50 of the 80 Trinamool MLAs and has been recognised as the official opposition, with him as Leader of the Opposition. Many of those MLAs sit in Muslim-populated seats, but the public has watched how little fight they have picked with the government. A cordial opposition is not one a wary community will trust. The faction has no statewide organisation distinct from the old Trinamool, and whatever ground network remains is, by habit, with Mamata. The MPs who joined the Nationalist Citizens Party of India — Yusuf Pathan from Baharampur, Abu Taher Khan from Murshidabad and Khalilur Rahaman from Jangipur — are further from the booth. A parliamentary group in Delhi does not harvest votes in Rejinagar.

In these by-elections, the Congress has the least damaged claim on the Muslim vote. After Sanchita Pradhan Dey of the Mamata faction withdrew in Nandigram, Mamata asked her camp to back Congress candidate Milan Pradhan. The Ritabrata faction's nominee, Mohammad Ehetash Mul Haque, is a Kolkata import with scattered ground work. Police then arrested Milan Pradhan in 19-year-old cases from the 2007 land movement and sent him to custody till October 3. The timing has created a sentiment that the Congress is the only party still standing against the BJP there. Consolidation of the Muslim vote behind him is possible, but winning the seat on those votes alone is not.

Rejinagar is different. Humayun Kabir's son, Golam Nabi Azad, is the AJUP candidate in a seat the party has already shown it can win.