“With our party [CPI(M)] not as strong, our supporters voted for the BJP, in order to unseat the TMC,” Sanjit Roy, a CPI(M) worker from New Barrackpore in West Bengal, told India Today Digital. The BJP’s rise in Bengal came at the cost of the Trinamool Congress (TMC), but the loyal voters of the Left parties played a crucial role in it. It might sound counter-intuitive, but the saffron spread in Bengal has a dash of red, courtesy, Communist voters.
That phenomenon was attested by Suvendu Adhikari, now the Chief Minister of West Bengal, in his victory speech on May 4 from Bhabanipur after defeating the TMC chief and incumbent chief minister Mamata Banerjee. “The CPM had 13,000 votes in Bhabanipur, and at least 10,000 of them were transferred to me. I also express my gratitude to CPI(M) voters there,” said Adhikari.
This vote transfer has been true in scores of seats across West Bengal, including Dum Dum Uttar, of which Sanjit Roy’s New Barrackpore is part of. The CPI(M) used to witness a high vote share in Dum Dum Uttar, but in the 2026 Assembly election, the BJP won from there, despite the Left party fielding Dipshita Dhar, one of the “new generation” leaders replacing the ageing Left leadership.
Though voters switching isn’t unusual and that’s how parties win, it comes as a surprise in the case of Left parties, including the CPI(M), which are cadre-based parties. Left voters are ideological loyalists and most get involved at a young age with Left students’ politics. Also, the Left parties had a vast network in West Bengal, having ruled the state for 34 consecutive years, from 1977 to 2011.
Experts, voters and Left workers suggest that the switch from the Left to the Right has been taking place for some time now. They point especially to 2018, when the massacre of CPI(M) cadres after the panchayat elections by the Trinamool Congress made Left workers and supporters flock to the BJP, which was gaining strength on the ground.
That was reflected in the 2019 Lok Sabha election when the BJP won 18 seats, increasing its tally from just two in 2014. The Assembly election of 2021 too reflected that, when the BJP’s tally jumped to 77 seats. We will get to the numbers and the vote share a little later after discussing the Left’s survival strategy.
The strategy is very similar to MMA fighters’. The fighter taps out to escape a chokehold or shoulder dislocation and fight another day.
The impact on the ground in West Bengal indicates that the strategy might have paid off. Videos circulating on social media show how the Left parties are reclaiming their offices that had been seized by Trinamool Congress members.
The people India Today Digital spoke to suggest that the heavy deployment of Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) personnel played a crucial role in projecting the Centre’s power and helped voters cast their votes without fear.
“Left voters were disillusioned with the environment of fear and violence the TMC would create during every election,” Roy said. “This time, the heavy deployment of CRPF jawans ensured more people were able to freely cast their vote than before.”
WHEN DID BENGAL’S LEFT VOTERS SHIFT TO THE BJP?
The CPI(M)-led Left Front was unseated in 2011 after 33 years and 10 months in power. That didn’t mean that the Left was wiped out in Bengal. Far from that, parties from the Left continued to energetically contest elections, and the CPI(M)’s annual Brigade Parade Ground rally at Kolkata’s Maidan, continues to draw in hundreds of thousands of cadres and supporters.
However, the Left’s fortunes have not improved. Take for instance, the largest of the lot, the CPI(M). The party’s vote share decreased from 41.09% in 2011 to 4.4% in 2026. Its support base first shifted towards Mamata’s TMC, and then, Rightwards, towards the BJP.
The tilt started in the aftermath of the 2018 Bengal panchayat elections, which proved to be a breaking point for the Left Front in Bengal. Marred by widespread violence, intimidation, and allegations that opposition candidates were prevented from filing nominations, the polls saw several Left workers attacked and killed across the state.
For many cadres, the elections reinforced the belief that the TMC had become the Left’s principal political enemy. As the Left’s organisational machinery steadily weakened under sustained pressure and political violence unleashed by TMC workers, a section of its traditional anti-TMC voter base increasingly shifted towards the BJP, viewing it as the only force capable of taking on Mamata Banerjee’s party.
The shift was made abundantly visible during the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections. It was the first time that none of the Left parties won a single seat, while its vote share tumbled from 30% in 2014 to under 8%.
This was due to the Left losing more than half of its voter base to the BJP, explained Kolkata-based author and academic Snigdhendu Bhattacharya to India Today Digital. “The Left has not been able to get 22% of those voters back,” he said.
It was amply visible that the BJP was gaining from the Left’s loss. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the BJP increased its tally to 18 (of 42 seats) from two in 2014, while its vote share jumped to 40% from 17% in 2014.
This shift was noted within the top brass of the Left Front. In 2019, then General Secretary of the CPI(M) Sitaram Yechury was reported as having admitted that Left voters had shifted allegiance to the BJP.
“No party member [of the CPM] would have voted [for the BJP]. But the Left vote support base, victims of intense terror and repression during eight years of TMC rule, have done so,” Kolkata-based newspaper, The Telegraph, reported Yechury as saying.
The shift intensified ahead of the 2021 Assembly elections. Left voters before the 2021 Assembly polls said, despite being communists at heart, they would cast their ballots for the BJP, according to an India Today Digital ground report.
“I know this is truly odd, because the Left and the Right cannot meet. But we will return to the Left if the BJP wins. Power is not what matters. Once the TMC is ousted, I too will go back to the CPM, 100%,” one Left supporter was quoted as saying.
This sentiment was reflected in that year’s electoral results, which saw the BJP win its highest-ever tally prior to 2026, bagging 77 constituencies, even as the TMC secured a landslide victory.
WHY DID LEFT VOTERS SUPPORT BJP IN WEST BENGAL?
We now know when West Bengal’s Left-leaning voters shifted to the BJP. The question is why? After all, on paper, the Left and the BJP are supposed to be as opposed to each other like the North and South Poles of a magnet.
The first reason is survival. Pure and simple. Since coming to power, Mamata’s TMC has consistently hounded its Left counterparts, assaulting party leaders and cadres, seizing offices, and driving many into hiding, or seeking alternatives like the BJP.
“After coming to power in 2011, she [Mamata Banerjee] focused on weakening other opposition parties, including the Congress and the Left. Many leaders from these parties either joined her or moved to the BJP for protection and political space. Over time, the BJP came to be seen as a kind of ‘life insurance policy’ for those opposing her,” TMC Rajya Sabha MP, Jawhar Sircar, told news agency PTI on May 6.
The second reason is the lack of a credible alternative.
“Mamata can be described as having been vengeful against Left workers. Between 2011 and 2016, she tried to effectively finish off the Opposition. In 2016… the TMC won 211 out of the 294 Assembly seats. Left workers could see that there wasn’t much opposition being provided by the Left. A large number of Hindu Left workers then began viewing the BJP as the best alternative,” Mohammad Reyaz, a political analyst and Assistant Professor at Kolkata’s Aliah University told India Today in 2021.
CPI(M) workers India Today Digital spoke to for this report said similar sentiments prevailed in the 2026 West Bengal Assembly election.
“Although we enjoyed significant local support, the party was not nearly as strong enough to present itself as a credible alternative. Hence, many of our supporters voted for the BJP,” said Roy, the CPI(M) worker.
The BJP might represent the antithesis of much that the average Left voter stands for, but for many, Mamata’s Trinamool, seen as determined to dismantle the last vestiges of Left influence in Bengal, has been a clear and present danger. The strategy, as summed up by many Left supporters, was, “Ebar Ram, Pore Bam”. In English, it loosely translates to, “This time we vote for Ram [BJP], next time we vote for the Left”.
A CPI(M) worker from New Barrackpore told India Today Digital that the BJP’s victory “does not mean that Left supporters suddenly embraced Hindutva politics or abandoned Left ideals”. “Rather, it reflects the weakness of the Left organisation at that moment, where many voters believed the Left was not yet electorally or administratively strong enough to challenge the TMC directly,” the person said.
HOW LEFT VOTERS HELPED TURN THE 2026 ELECTIONS IN BJP’S FAVOUR
However, portraying the Left’s support base as the decisive factor that brought the BJP to power in West Bengal, a state the party had long sought to win, would be an oversimplification. Other factors, including a shift in women’s votes towards the BJP and strong anti-incumbency against the ruling dispensation, played a significant role.
But regardless, the extent of the BJP’s victory makes it all the more clear how not only former TMC voters, but also Left-front supporters voted for the party. The results speak for themselves. The BJP’s tally of 207 out of 294 seats, along with a 45% vote share, suggests that its support cut across traditional party lines, including committed Left voters. It must have made all the more difference in seats that the BJP won by a narrow margin.
Much of the shift came down to the Left failing to present itself as a credible alternative vis a vis the BJP, as well as an overwhelming desire to unseat the TMC.
“People of Bengal wanted the TMC out, and so they blindly voted for the BJP,” Krishnendu Maitra, a CPI(M) worker from New Barrackpore in West Bengal, told India Today Digital. He also mentioned that the desire to oust Mamata’s TMC was so overwhelming, most voters “completely ignored the promises made by the BJP. They wanted the TMC out, saw the BJP as being the most credible party, and voted for them accordingly.”
One only needs to have a look at some of the seats won by the BJP, like Jadavpur, Uttarpara, Dum Dum, Dum Dum Uttar, Asansol among others shifting to the saffron party’s tally. Likewise, several prominent Left leaders, including Minakshi Mukherjee and Dipshita Dhar, lost to BJP candidates.
Increased security also played a role. The heavy deployment of CAPF personnel in the state created what many in West Bengal called the most peaceful elections they had seen in years. This allowed the state’s electoral, both Left supporters, and neutral voters to exercise their democratic right to the fullest.
“Many of our supporters got disillusioned from 2021 onwards as the TMC prevented them from properly exercising their vote. In 2026, with the heavy CAPF deployment ensuring a safe polling environment, and with our party not being as strong as they needed to be, our supporters voted for the BJP, in order to unseat the TMC,” Roy, the CPI(M) worker from New Barrackpore, said.
Nevertheless, the Left still made some gains. The alliance retained much of its vote share compared to 2021, author and academic Bhattacharya noted.
For context, the Left Front alliance (excluding the Congress) secured roughly 5.7% of the vote in 2021, compared to about 6.7% in 2026, suggesting that the core section of Left supporters has remained intact. In some seats, like in Uttarpara, the Left managed to increase its vote tally even though it fell well short of a majority.
Left parties also benefited heavily from the splitting of Muslim votes, most prominently in Murshidabad, where the CPI(M) won the Domkal seat, while the Left-aligned Nawsad Siddique-led ISF snatched the Bhangar seat from the TMC.
WHAT’S THE WAY FORWARD FOR THE LEFT IN BENGAL
Since 2019, a section of Left supporters has backed the BJP with the explicit aim of unseating Mamata and her TMC regime, a goal that has now been achieved. So what next?
Early signs point to a revival effort. Across social media, numerous videos and posts show CPI(M) and other Left Front cadres reclaiming party offices that were seized by TMC workers or left abandoned after the Left’s defeat in 2011.
In several cases, Left Front offices have been handed back in the presence of local BJP leaders. But these are early days.
CPI(M) workers and supporters India Today Digital spoke to after the BJP’s victory expressed both doubt and cautious optimism.
One Left supporter who requested anonymity doubted a Communist revival, saying that, “I doubt that the BJP will allow any significant opposition to form against them”.
A clip on X showed Forward Bloc cadres reclaiming their party office in Cooch Behar’s Dinhata, with BJP leader Piyali Gupta in presence. An emotional Gupta alleged that during Mamata Banerjee’s tenure, the TMC leaders had prevented her, the daughter of a Communist, from performing her father’s funeral in Dinhata.
So, will the future see a red dawn rising over the Kolkata skyline? A lot rides on the BJP itself. The state’s voters have a penchant for patience. They stayed with the Left for 34 years, and put up with the TMC for 15 years.
In any case, despite everything, the Left knows how to endure. Even as the TMC hounded its leaders and cadre for a decade and a half, their organisations weakened, but persisted and looks to still be energetic. Its candidates participate in every election, and even though many of its supporters, disillusioned, moved to the BJP. But it also retains a fiercely loyal cadre base. This clip on X, showed CPI(M) workers carefully taking down and storing party flags following the conclusion of the second phase of the voting, preparing for the battles ahead.
With the jora phul regime now a past, the path ahead for the Left should be clear. It must either occupy the opposition vacuum to be left by the TMC and reclaim disillusioned supporters who shifted to the BJP. Else it risks being trapped in the circle of irrelevance it fell into after 2011. Left supporters, meanwhile, did what they could do best. They defeated the TMC with their “ebar Ram, pore Bam” strategy.
– Ends