New Delhi, Nov 18 (IANS) West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress party General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee may visit North Bengal later this month to spur preparations for the 2026 state Assembly polls in a region where the state’s principal Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stands strong.

Banerjee’s programmes were scheduled in several districts of north Bengal, including Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri and North Dinajpur, said reports.

While the visit asserts his position as the leader entrusted with organisational work, it will boost the morale of local leaders currently facing a strong challenge from the BJP in the region, unlike the southern parts of the state.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, BJP’s Manoj Tigga retained the Alipurduar seat for his party, winning by more than 75,000 votes. In 2019, John Barla won here with a huge margin of over 2.4 lakh votes.

On both occasions, the runner-up was from the Trinamool. Additionally, in the last Parliamentary polls, the BJP led in all but a single of the seven Assembly constituencies that comprise this Lok Sabha seat.

In the 2021 Assembly election, the BJP won five of the Vidhan Sabha seats, losing only two to the Trinamool.

Similarly, the BJP’s Jayanta Kumar Roy retained the Jalpaiguri Lok Sabha constituency in 2024, though his winning margin decreased by over 97,000 votes.

Though in 2021 the Trinamool won five of the seven Assembly seats in this Parliamentary constituency, the BJP candidate led in four in last year’s Lok Sabha polls.

In Raiganj Lok Sabha constituency, where all the seven Assembly segments are in North Dinajpur district, BJP candidates convincingly defeated their respective Trinamool opponents successively in the 2019 and 2024 elections.

The 2024 result was preceded by the Assembly election results in 2021, when Trinamool candidates had romped home in six, leaving only one Vidhan Sabha seat for the BJP.

In nearby Balurghat Lok Sabha constituency – where six of the Assembly segments are in South Dinajpur district, with one in the North – Union Minister of State Sukanta Majumdar has won both the 2019 and 2024 Parliamentary elections. Here, four of the Assembly segments voted in the Trinamool’s favour, including the lone seat in North Dinajpur, while the BJP won in three.

Going further north, the Darjeeling Parliamentary constituency, which has since 2004 voted in favour of a party other than the state’s ruling dispensation, BJP candidates have been winning – with Jaswant Singh in 2009, S. S. Ahluwalia in 2014, followed by the sitting Lok Sabha MP Raju Bista (2019, 2024).

Even in the last Vidhan Sabha polls, the BJP romped home in five of the seven seats falling in this Lok Sabha constituency, leaving one each for the Trinamool and the Bharatiya Gorkha Prajatantrik Morcha.

The story has been almost similar is adjacent Assembly seats where the BJP has either won or lost in a close contest.

Thus, the North has been a region of concern for Trinamool supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

Early in August, Abhishek held meetings with party leaders from some North districts, which was then seen as an attempt at revamping the organisation from the grassroots ahead of the 2026 Assembly polls.

In Cooch Behar, where the Trinamool managed to wrest the Lok Sabha seat from the BJP in 2024, the ruling party kept a clear lead in four of the seven Assembly segments. It managed to reverse its fortune in at least two of these where in the 2021 Assembly election it had lost five of the seven Vidhan Sabha seats.

Abhishek held the August meeting with district Presidents and concerned ministers in the state Cabinet to chalk out organisational changes with an eye on the forthcoming Assembly election, and then expecting the announcement of the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

The Trinamool leader’s visit is thus an extension of those meetings to personally supervise booth-level coordination and voter outreach with state polls likely to take place in the first half of next year.

–IANS

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