Day after Bijaya Dasami, TMC and BJP resume focus on 2026 Bengal assembly polls

Kolkata, Oct 3 (PTI) Hardly had the euphoria over Durga Puja festivities settled in West Bengal, ruling Trinamool Congress and its principal challenger, the BJP, shifted gears on Friday to prepare for the crucial assembly elections scheduled next year.

While the TMC announced its mass outreach programme across the state from Sunday, converting the festival tradition into an opportunity to address grassroots voters, the BJP's top state leadership wasted no time getting into a huddle with the newly appointed central observers for the state after they landed in Kolkata on Friday morning.

Union Environment Minister Bhupendra Yadav and BJP's Lok Sabha MP Biplab Deb, the party's observer and co-observer respectively to oversee the 2026 state elections, held a meeting with select state leaders, including president Samik Bhattacharya, Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari, junior Union Minister Sukanta Majumdar and former BJP state Mahila Morcha president Locket Chatterjee, to strategise for the polls.

Desperately eyeing a regime change by toppling the Mamata Banerjee government, the central leaders insisted on fine-tuning the political programmes of the saffron party starting immediately, a leader said.

"The party's focus would also remain on effective implementation of the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, an exercise which is scheduled to begin shortly after the Puja vacations. If SIR is implemented properly here, names of a large number of illegitimate voters are deleted, then that would severely jeopardise Mamata Banerjee's chances for a fourth tenure," the leader said.

The meeting to be held at the party's Salt Lake office, sources said, was also likely to discuss the possibility of an early deployment of central armed police forces for free and fair conduct of the elections.

The TMC, on the other hand, declared its plans to hold Bijaya Sammelani functions, traditional community-binding cultural programmes held after the Pujas, at block levels across the state starting Sunday.

According to TMC sources, the programme, announced by the party's national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, will commence on the day of the scheduled annual Puja Carnival on Red Road in central Kolkata.

The party has identified 50 leaders, including ministers, MPs and MLAs, who would attend and address these gatherings and use the platforms to interact and engage in courtesy exchanges with people at the grassroots, a party leader said. PTI SMY MNB