By engineering TMC collapse, BJP risks reputational backlash for 'horse-trading' and inadvertently creating space for a revived Left-Congress ahead of 2029 polls
The political theatre in West Bengal has entered its most dramatic act yet. Weeks after the Bharatiya Janata Party’s thumping victory in the 2026 Assembly elections, the real story is not the scale of that win but the systematic hollowing out of the Trinamool Congress that has followed.
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A majority of the TMC’s remaining MLAs — around 58 out of roughly 80 — have broken away, submitted letters to the Speaker staking claim to the Leader of the Opposition post, and effectively walked out on Mamata Banerjee’s leadership. At the same time, 20 TMC MPs have declared support for the NDA, moving away from the party symbol and the face that gave them their political existence.
Engineered decapitation
This is not the quiet fading of a defeated regional force. It is a public, messy, and apparently engineered decapitation. TMC MP Mahua Moitra has called it what it looks like: an “operation” by the BJP, complete with inducements, parallel structures, and a steady stream of cash and retainers for the willing. Her description of the unfolding drama as a soap opera titled ‘Kyunki Gaddar Bhi Kabhi Saansad The’ is both savage and precise.
TMC's decimation delivers exactly what the BJP’s strategists wanted: a fragmented and demoralised regional opponent in India’s most politically volatile large state.
Kirti Azad has been equally direct, pointing to “Amit Shah ka khel” and noting the complete absence of morality in politics since the BJP came to power at the Centre. These are not stray soundbites; they reflect a party staring at its own implosion while the principal beneficiary watches from Delhi.
TMC’s loss is BJP’s win
For the BJP, the arithmetic is seductive. A weakened TMC means fewer organised protests on the streets of Kolkata, a less effective Opposition in the Assembly, and a reduced capacity to mobilise the minority and rural vote that once made Mamata Banerjee unassailable.
The party that once positioned itself as the sole alternative to “Delhi’s rule” now struggles to hold even its own legislators.
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In the short term, this decimation delivers exactly what the BJP’s strategists wanted: a fragmented and demoralised regional opponent in India’s most politically volatile large state. Operation Lotus, which had stuttered in earlier attempts, has finally found purchase in a party reeling from electoral humiliation.
Opportunity for Left, Congress
Yet the assumption that removing one opponent automatically clears the field is the kind of linear thinking that repeatedly fails in Indian politics. Bengal’s political space has never been a simple BJP-versus-TMC binary for long.
Before 2011, when the TMC swept the Left Front out after 34 years, the principal contest was between the CPI(M)-led Left and the Congress. Those forces were not extinguished; they were displaced. Their organisational remnants, ideological pockets, and residual cadre networks survived in rural Bengal, among sections of the minority community, and in pockets of urban and intellectual resistance.
With the TMC now reduced to a rump, that space is suddenly vacant and up for reclamation. The Left and the Congress do not need to become new versions of the TMC to matter. They only need to present themselves as credible, less personality-driven alternatives to the BJP.
With the TMC now reduced to a rump, that space is suddenly vacant and up for reclamation. The Left and the Congress do not need to become new versions of the TMC to matter. They only need to present themselves as credible, less personality-driven alternatives to a BJP that is now the incumbent power in the state.
A Congress-Left understanding — formal or tactical — could consolidate anti-BJP votes more efficiently than a broken TMC ever could. Even without an alliance, the two parties operating in parallel could divide the opposition space in ways that keep the BJP from converting its 2026 Assembly dominance into unchallenged 2029 Lok Sabha hegemony across West Bengal’s 42 seats.
History repeats itself
History offers a cautionary mirror. The TMC’s own rise in 2011 was built on the ruins of the Left. The methods used to dismantle one dominant force created the conditions for another. Today, the BJP is repeating a version of that cycle, only this time the target is the party that had itself displaced the old order.
The defectors’ stated reasons — dissatisfaction with “family control,” desire for “development,” frustration with I-PAC-style consultants — may contain grains of truth. But the timing, the scale, and the visible hand of inducements tell a different story.
Also read: TMC rebel MPs join NCPI to back NDA while also skirting legal hurdles
When nearly 20 MPs and a clear majority of the remaining MLAs move in near-simultaneous fashion, organic dissent begins to look like coordinated extraction.
BJP’s game comes with costs
The costs are not merely electoral. The optics of this “shuddhikaran” — the public separation of the “real” from the “fake” loyalists — reinforce every existing charge of political immorality and horse-trading. For a party that has built its national brand on institutional integrity and anti-corruption, being perceived as the director of mass defections carries a long-term reputational price.
It also sets a precedent. What is done to the TMC today can be done to any party tomorrow, including the BJP in states where it finds itself in Opposition. The steady weakening of the anti-defection law’s spirit, the instrumental use of Speakers, and the normalisation of inducements erode the very guardrails that stable democracy requires.
By 2029, the BJP may discover it has solved one problem by creating two others. Instead of facing a single, if battered, regional adversary in TMC, it could confront a more ideologically diverse opposition landscape.
By 2029, the BJP may discover it has solved one problem by creating two others. Instead of facing a single, if battered, regional adversary led by a charismatic and combative Mamata Banerjee, it could confront a more ideologically diverse opposition landscape.
A Congress trying to reclaim its eastern footprint with renewed national energy, and a Left with organisational discipline and experience of long-term governance, are not negligible quantities. Their combined or parallel pressure could complicate the BJP’s national seat math in ways a fragmented TMC never would.
The rebels themselves are unlikely to remain a monolithic bloc inside the NDA tent; some may drift, form new vehicles, or become liabilities when the next round of bargaining begins.
Will BJP’s political hegemony last?
Bengal has never rewarded permanent one-party dominance. Its voters have shown a consistent capacity to punish arrogance and reward reinvention. The TMC’s decimation has cleared the decks, but it has not eliminated the need for credible opposition. It has merely changed the cast.
The Left and Congress are already watching the chaos with interest. By removing the most visible and vocal check on its power, the BJP has created the conditions for new checks to emerge — checks that may prove more durable precisely because they are not dependent on a single towering personality or a single party’s organisational machinery.
Also read: Despite NCPI merger, rebel MPs' fight over TMC identity is far from over
The real test is not how many MLAs or MPs can be peeled away in 2026. It is whether the BJP can govern Bengal in a manner that prevents the vacuum from being filled by forces it has not yet learned to manage. Decimation is a tactic.
Durable political hegemony requires something more: the ability to prevent the very alternatives one claims to have eliminated from regenerating. In Bengal right now, the BJP has won a significant battle. Whether it has also sown the seeds of more complicated wars on multiple fronts remains the question that will define the next three years.
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