Kolkata, May 5 : A day after scripting a historic mandate in West Bengal, the BJP on Tuesday inched its tally up to 207 seats in the 294-member assembly, following a recount-triggered victory in the Rajarhat-New Town constituency, adding a final layer of drama to an already landmark verdict.
The additional seat came after BJP candidate Piyush Kanodia defeated sitting two-term TMC MLA Tapash Chatterjee by a slender margin of 309 votes after a recount, pushing the party’s final tally from 206 to 207.
At the end of 18 rounds of counting, Kanodia polled 1,06,564 votes, while Chatterjee secured 1,06,255 votes, with Election Commission sources confirming that the BJP candidate would be formally declared the winner shortly.
The result follows Monday’s decisive mandate, in which the BJP crossed the two-thirds mark to end the Trinamool Congress’s 15-year rule and come to power for the first time in the state.
The verdict had also carried significant symbolic weight, with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee losing the high-profile Bhabanipur seat to BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari.
With the revised tally, the BJP has further consolidated its dominant position, well above the halfway mark of 148 seats, reinforcing the scale of its victory.
What began as early leads on counting day quickly snowballed into a decisive wave for the BJP, which finished with over 200 seats, while the TMC was reduced to around 79, with leads in a couple more, according to Election Commission data.
The scale, spread and speed of the surge pointed not merely to a change in government but to a deeper ideological and organisational realignment in the state.
For the first time since 1972, West Bengal is set to be governed by a party that is also in power at the Centre, a shift with far-reaching administrative and political implications.
The BJP’s campaign was anchored by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose high-decibel rallies and direct voter outreach formed the core of the party’s push, while Union Home Minister Amit Shah drove the organisational machinery on the ground.
The party’s rise in Bengal from the margins to the principal challenger and now the ruling force has been gradual but methodical.
In contrast, the TMC’s resistance appeared fragmented, with erosion visible across several regions, including north Bengal and Junglemahal.
Vote share data highlighted the depth of the shift. The BJP’s vote share rose to around 45 per cent, up from 38 per cent in 2021, while the TMC’s declined to nearly 40.94 per cent from 48 per cent.
In seat terms, the reversal was stark: the TMC’s tally falling from 215 to around 80, even as the BJP surged from 77 to 207 seats, converting organisational expansion into a decisive and historic mandate.
