Widening its inroads in the constituencies bordering Bangladesh, the BJP has won 11 more seats in the 2026 West Bengal Assembly elections as compared to the last polls.
In 2021, the BJP had won 17 of the state’s 44 Assembly seats along the International Border with Bangladesh. In 2026, banking on its anti-Bangladesh refugee stance, the BJP won 28 of these seats — retaining not only its 17 seats, but also wresting 11 more previously held by the Trinamool Congress (TMC).
In the 2021 Assembly elections, the TMC had won 27 of these 44 seats. In 2026, the number nearly halved to 15. It lost 12 seats — 11 to BJP and one, the Raninagar seat, to the Congress. Raninagar is the only border constituency that the Congress has managed to win — one amongst its only two seats in the state elections this time.
These 44 Assembly constituencies are spread across the districts of Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, Uttar Dinajpur, Dakshin Dinajpur, Darjeeling, Malda, Murshidabad, Nadia, North 24 Parganas, and South 24 Parganas — regions known to have a sizeable Muslim population.
Among the TMC’s 15 MLAs in the border seats, 11 are Muslims. The Congress’s Raninagar MLA, Julfikar Ali, is also a Muslim, who defeated the TMC’s outgoing MLA Abdul Soumik Hossain by a slim margin of 2,701 votes. The BJP, on the other hand, did not field a single Muslim candidate.
Besides the number of the seats won, the winning margins of the parties also indicate that the BJP’s grip has tightened in the seats falling in the India–Bangladesh border area, which is a sensitive zone.
The BJP’s average win margin in its 28 seats is 40,195 votes, far above the TMC’s average margin of 28,504 votes in the 15 seats it won this time.
Compared to the 2021 polls, the BJP has more than doubled its average win margin in the region, where the party had earlier won 17 seats with an average margin of 15,795 votes. In these 17 seats in particular, the BJP not just retained them in the 2026 elections but also tripled its average win margin here to 50,440 votes.
In the 2021 polls, the TMC’s average margin in the 27 seats it won here was 38,835 votes. As for the 15 seats it managed to retain in the area, the TMC’s victory margin became half from its 2021 Assembly polls margin 51,962 votes.
Alleged infiltration from Bangladesh has been a key campaign issue for the BJP over the past several years. In line with this, the BJP has promised a zero-tolerance policy on infiltration, saying it will implement the “detect, delete and deport” model to prevent alleged entry of illegal foreigners. The BJP has also promised land allocation for fencing along the India–Bangladesh border within 45 days of forming the government in the state. In its manifesto too, the BJP promised strict measures to curb “illegal infiltration” and address what it claims is a “silent demographic invasion”.
India shares a 4,096-km border with Bangladesh, of which a 2,216-km stretch falls in West Bengal. Of the total border stretch, around 1,653-km stretch has been fenced, leaving approximately 563 km unfenced border, largely along the state, as per a reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha in August 2025.
