Kolkata, April 8 Turning her nomination filing for the Bhabanipur seat into a political counteroffensive to the BJP's call for "paribartan," West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday marched from her Kalighat residence to submit her papers, presenting the constituency as a "mini India" under siege from polarization.
Amid chants of 'Mamata Banerjee zindabad', 'Joy Bangla', and 'TMC zindabad', Banerjee led a colorful procession to the Alipore Survey Building, where she filed her nomination papers for the constituency, reviving her electoral career in 2021.
With folded hands and her trademark smile, Banerjee walked nearly 600 meters with female supporters blowing conch shells, raising cheers, and party workers waving Trinamool Congress flags.
While BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari's nomination filing last week, accompanied by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, was intended to showcase saffron strength and call for "paribartan", Banerjee's roadshow on Wednesday was carefully orchestrated as its ideological opposite.
"I was born and raised here in Bhabanipur. I live here 365 days a year. My life, my work, my movements – everything revolves around Bhabanipur. Everything in my life started here. I thank and salute the people of Bhabanipur," Banerjee said after filing her nomination papers.
Seeking to broaden the contest beyond Bhabanipur, Banerjee appealed to voters across Bengal to vote for the TMC.
"I appeal to the people not only in Bhabanipur but in all the 294 constituencies to ensure the victory of our candidates. We will win with a larger mandate," she said.
The TMC had won 213 of the 294 seats in the 2021 assembly elections.
However, the sharpest political message of the day came through the issue of voter roll revision.
Banerjee alleged that large-scale deletions under the SIR (Statutory Return) had disproportionately affected Muslims and women, and that the TMC would again move a court against the freezing of electoral rolls.
"I am really saddened that so many names have been deleted from the electoral rolls," she said.
The TMC supremo also said, "I moved the Supreme Court, and out of 1.2 crore names, 32 lakh have been restored. Those who are in the adjudication list should also be restored. I fail to understand why the voter rolls have been frozen. We will again move a court."
The TMC believes that the SIR has disproportionately affected Muslims and women – two of Banerjee's strongest social constituencies – and is trying to recast the election narrative from corruption, lack of jobs, and anti-incumbency to one centered on identity, citizenship, and deleted names.
This is particularly significant in Bhabanipur, where nearly 47,000 names have reportedly been deleted from the rolls, and another 14,000 were kept under adjudication.
More than 56 per cent of those under adjudication are Muslims, although the community forms only around 24 per cent of the electorate.
The TMC sought to present Bhabanipur as a "mini India" – a constituency where Bengali Hindus, Gujarati and Marwari traders, Punjabi families, Jains, and Muslims have coexisted for decades.
This message was evident even in the proposers to Banerjee's nomination papers: Rubi Hakim, wife of Kolkata Mayor Firhad Hakim; businessman Nispal Singh Rane, TMC leader Bablu Singh; and Miraj Shah of the Bhabanipur Education Society.
Spread across eight Kolkata Municipal Corporation wards, Bhabanipur has long been one of the state's most socially diverse constituencies.
Roughly 42 per cent of its electorate are Bengali Hindus, 34 per cent non-Bengali Hindus, and around 24 per cent Muslims.
The BJP, however, believes that the constituency is no longer the fortress it once was for Banerjee.
Though the TMC won Bhabanipur by nearly 29,000 votes in 2021, and Banerjee later increased that margin to more than 58,000 in the bypoll after her defeat in Nandigram, the party's lead in the Bhabanipur assembly segment shrank to just 8,297 votes in the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
The BJP also won in five of the constituency's eight KMC wards – 63, 70, 71, 72, and 74.
This has encouraged the saffron camp to field Adhikari, the former TMC strongman who defeated Banerjee in Nandigram in 2021 and has since become her fiercest rival.
"Normally, we would have to win 170 seats. But if Suvendu Babu defeats Mamata Banerjee in Bhabanipur, 'paribartan' will come automatically," Amit Shah had said while accompanying Adhikari during his nomination filing.
For Banerjee, therefore, Wednesday's march from Kalighat to Alipore was not merely the filing of a nomination paper.
It was an attempt to transform Bhabanipur into the symbolic battlefield of Bengal's 2026 election – a contest between the BJP's politics of change and identity and the TMC's appeal to pluralism, belonging, and grievance over voter deletions.