What Kaliganj Bypoll Reveals About Bengal’s Upcoming 2026 Battle

The results of the byelections in the Kaliganj Assembly seat in Bengal’s Nadia district came as no surprise.

The byelection was necessitated by the death of the then sitting Trinamool Congress legislator, Nasiruddin Ahmed, in February this year. Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee awarded the party ticket to his daughter, Alifa Ahmed, who trounced her BJP rival Ashish Ghosh by a huge margin of over 50,000 votes.

The Trinamool Congress held up this victory, and the fact that the BJP’s vote share had decreased from 30.91% in 2021 to 28.29% in the bypolls, as proof of Mamata Banerjee’s continuing popularity.

But the BJP has found encouraging positives in the results. Party leaders say that while the victory of the Trinamool Congress candidate in the Muslim-majority constituency was a given, it is the consolidation of Hindu votes that is significant.

The byelection results

Trinamool’s Alifa Ahmed polled 1,02,759 votes, which represented a vote share of 55.15%. The BJP’s Ashish Ghosh got 52,710 votes (28.29% vote share) while the Congress candidate (backed by the Left) got 28,348 votes (15.21% vote share).

In the 2021 Assembly elections, Nasiruddin Ahmed (Alifa’s father) got 1,10,696 votes (53.35% vote share) while the BJP’s Abhijit Ghosh polled 64,709 votes (30.91% vote share) and the Congress’ Abul Kashem got 25,076 votes (11.98% vote share).

The Trinamool touted the 1.8% increase in its vote share and the decline of 2.62% in the BJP’s vote share to claim that while Mamata Banerjee’s popularity has not only remained intact but also increased, the BJP’s “communal politics” is being rejected by the people of Bengal.

The Congress-Left combine also drew solace from the fact that its vote share increased by 3.23% (from 11.98% in 2021 to 15.21% this time).

But then, that’s poor consolation for the Congress-Left combine which had been winning this seat till the 2016 Assembly elections.

The constituency and past results

Kaliganj, which is one of the seven Assembly constituencies in the Krishnanagar Lok Sabha seat, falls in Nadia district bordering Bangladesh.

The Trinamool Congress won all the seven Assembly seats in the 2021 Assembly elections. The party’s firebrand Mahua Moitra has been representing the Krishnanagar Lok Sabha seat since 2019.

Nadia district was a Hindu-majority district in 1947. But like many of the districts of Bengal bordering Bangladesh, large-scale and illegal influx of Muslims from across the border since the mid-1950s has changed the demography of the district.

Muslims form about 27% of the population of the district now, and nearly 37% of the electorate of Krishnanagar Lok Sabha seat.

But in the Kaliganj Assembly constituency, Muslims have become a majority. The 2011 census revealed that Muslims formed 58.51% of the population while Hindus formed 41.36% of the population.

Over the last 14 years (since the 2011 census), the demography has changed more and Muslims are estimated to form more than 61% of the population there.

According to the 2001 census figures, Muslims had formed 55.59% of the population of Kaliganj community development block (which makes up the Kaliganj Assembly constituency) while Hindus formed 44.25% of the population.

The 1991 census had revealed that Muslims formed 52.03% of Kaliganj’s population while Hindus formed 47.96% of the population.

As per the 1981 census, Muslims formed 48.8% of the population while Hindus formed 51.1% of the population. A decade before that (the 1971 census), Hindus formed 54.6% of the population of Kaliganj while Muslims formed 45.3% of the population.

In 1961, Hindus formed nearly 56.7% of the population of Kaliganj and in 1951, Hindus formed 58% of the population of Kaliganj.

It is, thus, apparent that the demography of Kaliganj has changed dramatically and Hindus now form a minority in the area where they were once a majority. This has happened because of the large-scale influx of Muslims from across the border and also the consequent displacement of Hindus.

This change in demography is also reflected in the election results of the Kaliganj Assembly seat. While Hindus had represented the constituency in the past, only Muslims have won the seat since 2011.

Even though Kaliganj was a Hindu-majority constituency, Congress nominee S.M. Fazlur Rahman won the seat in 1951, 1962, 1967 and 1969. The Congress’ Mahananda Haldar won the seat in 1957.

Mir Fakir Mohammad (an Independent candidate) won the seat in 1971, but Shib Shankar Bandopadhyay of the Congress wrested it back in 1972. Debsaran Ghosh of the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), a constituent of the Left Front, bagged the seat in 1977 and 1982.

The Congress’ Abdus Salam Munshi won the seat in 1987, 1991 and 1996 followed by the RSP’s Dhananjoy Modak in 2001 and 2006.

A close analysis of the election results since 1951 reveals that whenever the Congress or the RSP fielded a strong Muslim candidate, Muslim votes consolidated and Muslims voted en masse for that candidate.

But Hindu votes also consolidated, especially in 1972, 1977 and 1982. That, says pollster Ashis Biswas, is because of the horrific atrocities committed by the West Pakistani forces on Hindus in East Pakistan during ‘Operation Searchlight’ launched in March 1971.

Those atrocities – mass murders of Hindu men and children, mass rape and enslavement of Hindu women, destruction or forcible takeover of Hindu properties, and the resultant exodus of Hindus from East Pakistan to India – resulted in the consolidation of Hindu votes on this side of the border.

The Hindu consolidation this time

A close analysis of the results of the byelections will reveal that a substantial consolidation of Hindu votes has happened.

Of the 309 polling booths in the Kaliganj Assembly constituency, Hindus form a majority of the electorate under 109 polling booths. Hindus form a very small percentage of the electorate under the remaining 200 polling booths.

In 108 of the 109 polling booths where Hindus are in a majority, the BJP got a large majority of the votes. In only one booth (Booth No. 12) which has 592 voters, of whom 351 voted, the BJP polled only 132 votes of the 351 votes that were cast. It is only in this booth that a majority of the Hindus voted in favour of the Trinamool Congress.

“Overall, we got nearly 73% of the votes in the 108 polling booths where Hindus form a majority. This is very encouraging for us. Hindus are becoming politically aware and voting intelligently,” leader of opposition and senior BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari told Swarajya.

“The ruling party almost always wins a by-election. And in a Muslim-majority seat, there is no way we could have won. But despite that, we did well,” said Adhikari.

As for the decline in the BJP’s vote share, Adhikari ascribed it to rigging (false voting) by Trinamool cadres and his own party’s inability to ensure that party supporters could go to vote fearlessly.

“We didn’t have enough workers on the ground to prevent rigging and to take out voters to the polling booths. The Trinamool threatened and terrorised our voters, so many of them could not vote,” he said.

“Many of our voters had told us they will not vote because this was a byelection and there is no point voting in a byelection because the outcome will not have any effect on the power equation in the state. They have assured us they will vote in next year's Assembly elections,” explained Adhikari.

Also, Adhikari added, the bypolls were held when educational institutions were closed and so many Hindu families had gone on vacations. The foul weather on the day of polling also affected the turnout of Hindu voters. Hence, the voting percentage of Hindus decreased,” said Adhikari.

Of the 2.34 lakh voters in Kaliganj, Hindus number about 1.1 lakh. About 66% (about 72,600) of these Hindu voters exercised their franchise. BJP received 52,710 votes, which means the BJP got 72.6% of the Hindu votes.

BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar ascribed the increase in the vote share of the Left-supported Congress candidate to “machinations by the Trinamool”.

“The Trinamool realises that the BJP is the biggest threat and will unseat them from power. So they propped up the Congress candidate and helped him in order to cut BJP votes. The Trinamool asked a small section of its supporters to vote for the Congress candidate in order to create the impression that the Congress-Left is staging a political comeback in Bengal at the expense of the BJP. But such games will not yield any results in the 2026 Assembly elections,” Majumdar told Swarajya.

Political analyst Kunal Sengupta agrees with Adhikari. “A close analysis of the results shows that Hindu votes have consolidated in favour of the BJP,” he told Swarajya.

The primary reason behind that, he said, is the blatant appeasement of Muslims by the Trinamool Congress and the resultant muscle-flexing by Muslims.

“Hindus in Kaliganj are becoming very aware because they are at the receiving end of muscle-flexing by Muslims who enjoy the unstinted patronage of the state machinery. Hindus are slowly getting displaced from Kaliganj and moving away to safer places. The recent riots against Hindus in neighbouring Murshidabad district have also contributed to the consolidation of Hindu votes in Kaliganj,” said Sengupta, who teaches at Burdwan University.

Sociologist Kallol Kanti Bhattacharya, who teaches the subject at Calcutta University, told Swarajya: “The ghastly attacks on Hindus, including the brutal killing of a father-son duo, displacement of hundreds of Hindu families and destruction of properties of Hindus as well as desecration or destruction of Hindu temples has scarred Hindus all over the state. And that’s why the Hindus of Kaliganj voted in large numbers for the BJP”.

Amiya Basu, another sociologist, said that the gradual radicalisation of Muslims in rural Bengal has led to an alarming increase in attacks on and persecution of Hindus, especially in Muslim-majority areas.

“Mostly, these attacks on Hindus are minor incidents and stay under the radar. The state machinery, at the behest of the ruling party, favours the Muslim community. This has bred disenchantment and anger among the Hindus,” Basu told Swarajya.

Will Hindu votes consolidate in 2026?

Suvendu Adhikari and other BJP leaders say that there is a fair chance of this happening in next year’s Assembly elections.

“Kaliganj has sent out a good signal. If Hindu votes consolidate in 220 of the 294 Assembly seats in Bengal, Mamata Banerjee will surely be ousted from power,” Adhikari said.

Muslims form above 30% of the electorate in 102 Assembly constituencies, and the BJP has won some of these seats in 2021. In 74 of these seats, Muslims are in a majority and a Hindu (BJP) candidate cannot hope to win any of those 74 seats.

“But if this trend of consolidation of Hindu votes continues, and we will try our best to ensure that it does, then we will surely win the 2026 Assembly elections,” said Adhikari.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, about 69% of the Hindus who exercised their franchise voted for the BJP. But the turnout of Hindu voters was quite low at 65% while that of Muslims ranged between 90% and 94%.

The challenge before the BJP, admitted Adhikari, is to motivate a much larger number of Hindus to vote and also to get an additional five percent of Hindu votes.

“If we can get about 80% of the Hindus to vote, and if we can increase our share of Hindu votes to about 74%, we will win the 2026 elections,” said Adhikari.

Also read: Nearly One In Five Hindus In Bengal Voted For Trinamool Last Year: Here's Why