Bengal’s poll violence continues, even with BJP

Cometh the election, cometh violence in West Bengal; 2026 is no exception. Only difference is, there was no scope for violence during the polls guarded by India’s para-military forces, but after the polls, the norm seems to have slackened. Just after BJP’s landslide victory, reports indicate 4 people being killed in post-poll violence; party offices of the TMC were ransacked across the state since Monday evening, with both parties levelling allegations against each other.

Poll violence in Bengal started from the 1950s and continues to the present, with the ruling party whichever one is in power, breaking the backs of opposition parties in the most ruthless manner possible. While the common narrative tends to blame the Left Front for entrenching this culture, later taken over and refined by the Trinamool Congress, political scientists and experts argue that violence has long been embedded in Bengal’s socio-political fabric.

Political violence is attributed to the characteristic Bengali revolutionary sentiment, a community which worships its rebel leaders such as Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Master da Surya Sen. It was during the 34-year rule of the CPI (M)-led Left Front that political brutality became “institutionalised” with the “party-society” matrix becoming the dominant aspect of rural Bengal.

But then, violence was there even during Congress rule under Bidhan Chandra Roy and there were attacks on Jyoti Basu during the Naxalbari protest. Between 2006 and 2023, the total number of people killed in poll related violence in Bengal is a staggering 712, as per cumulative data from several sources. According to a 2009 editorial in EPW, political killings after May 16, 2009 had crossed the 150 mark.

Left Front chairman Biman Bose had verified to The Hindu a list of 269 supporters killed since the 2009 Lok Sabha polls up until the mid-2010 period. Interestingly, Union home minister Amit Shah himself had claimed that more than 130 BJP workers had been killed in Bengal between 2019 and 2021. The trend has not changed, as was boasted as a pre-poll promise by Amit Shah and by Modi after the decisive conquest of Bengal, as is corroborated by post poll violence incidents.

Modi promised not badla, but badlao in Bengal. Will BJP supporters in their new found exuberance resort to unleashing violence on the vanquished TMC? Or will it be the wounded, defeated TMC cadres who will try to take revenge on the saffron camp?And this new trend of violence is happening right under the nose of Shah forcing the Election Commission of India (ECI) to retain around 500 companies in the state until further orders to prevent post-poll violence, including the UP government’s encounter specialist.