BAGDA: In Matua strongholds Bagda and Gaighata in West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district bordering Bangladesh, the election has slipped beyond the familiar BJP-TMC duel.
The battle now runs through the divided Matua first family, with brothers, wives and cousins contesting from rival camps, while the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has stirred fresh anxieties among refugee Hindus who once voted together.
Matuas, originally from East Pakistan, are Hindus who migrated to India during the Partition and after the creation of Bangladesh.
At Thakurnagar, headquarters of the Matua Mahasangh, the anxiety is visible in tea stalls, courtyards and party offices. Families speak in hushed voices about names disappearing from the final voter list, voters being kept "under adjudication", and decades-old residents suddenly being asked to prove they belong to the area.
The tension has made Bagda and Gaighata in the Bongaon subdivision among the most closely watched constituencies in the second phase of the polls on April 29.
In Bagda, the contest has entered the Thakurbari drawing room. The TMC has fielded sitting MLA Madhuparna Thakur, daughter of Rajya Sabha MP Mamatabala Thakur. The BJP has responded with Soma Thakur, wife of Union minister and Bongaon MP Shantanu Thakur.
The result is a rare political duel between sister-in-law and sister-in-law, with both claiming to represent the Matua legacy.
Bagda, where Scheduled Castes account for more than 53 per cent of the electorate and Matuas make up over 40 per cent of voters, has long been seen as a political weather vane in the refugee belt.
BJP's Biswajit Das won the seat in 2021 with nearly 49 per cent of the votes. But Das later crossed over to the TMC. In the 2024 bypoll, the TMC brought in Madhuparna Thakur, one of the youngest members of the Thakur family, and she won with more than 55 per cent of the votes.
Yet the BJP's decision to field Soma Thakur has not gone down well with many local workers. They wanted a local face and rallied behind former BJP MLA Dulal Bar, now contesting as an Independent.
The resentment is similar in neighbouring Gaighata, where BJP MLA Subrata Thakur, elder brother of Shantanu Thakur and chairman of the All India Matua Mahasangh, is seeking re-election.
Gaighata was one of the BJP's showcase victories in 2021. Subrata Thakur won the seat with around 47 per cent of the votes, consolidating the Matua support that had shifted towards the saffron camp after the citizenship promise.
This time, he is facing not only TMC candidate Narottam Biswas, but also discontent in his own party. Tanima Sen, a BJP mandal president, filed nomination as an Independent in protest against Subrata's candidature, accusing the party of imposing a "family candidate" and ignoring grassroots opinion.
Though she later withdrew after a truce with the BJP leadership, the episode exposed simmering anger against what several local workers describe as the growing dominance of the Thakurbari in party affairs.
The rebellion has been sharpened by the SIR exercise. According to party leaders and local estimates, around 55,000 names were deleted from electoral rolls in Bagda and nearly 39,000 in Gaighata. North 24-Parganas, the district with the largest concentration of Matua refugees, lost more than 12.3 lakh names after the revision.
For the BJP, the deletions have struck at the core of its political message. Since 2019, the party had built its rise in the Matua belt around a simple proposition -- support the BJP, and the uncertainty over citizenship would end through the CAA. But many of those who applied for citizenship certificates now claim their names have vanished from the voter list.
"We were promised citizenship. Now we are being told we may not even vote," said Sukhomoy Haldar, a resident of Gaighata.
The unease has produced political consequences. In Gaighata, 61 BJP workers joined the TMC after the publication of the final rolls. In Bagda, nearly 50 Matua families switched sides.
Shantanu Thakur said affected voters can approach tribunals to get their names restored. State BJP leaders dismissed talks of factionalism and said the party would still benefit from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's appeal.
"There is no division in the Matua community. Some confusion has been created over SIR, but every deleted voter will get justice and the BJP will again win these seats," its Bongaon organisational district president Bikash Ghosh said.
The TMC sees the deletions as the first signs of a shift in the refugee belt. "People who were promised citizenship are now standing in queues to prove they are voters. The Matua community feels betrayed, and that anger is visible in Bagda and Gaighata," Madhuparna Thakur said.
For decades, the Matuas voted under the shadow of Binapani Devi, the community matriarch whose word often decided political allegiance. Today, that certainty has vanished. The same Thakur family now stands divided between the BJP and the TMC, with brothers, wives and cousins fighting from opposite camps.
In Bagda and Gaighata, the election no longer resembles a routine contest between two parties. It looks more like a family feud over the inheritance of a community that suddenly feels politically orphaned.
The Matua vote influences at least 34 assembly seats directly and another two dozen along the Bangladesh border. BJP insiders admit that refugee and Matua-dominated belts contributed more than half of the party's 77 seats in 2021. If the BJP loses ground in Bagda and Gaighata, the tremors could travel far beyond Bongaon.
The irony is hard to miss. The BJP had once turned the Matua belt into the backbone of its Bengal rise by promising citizenship and certainty. Today, in Bagda and Gaighata, that promise is colliding with missing names, rebel candidates and a divided Thakurbari.
For the first time in years, the Matua vote does not appear to be moving in one direction. It is split between hurt and hope, between the old promise of citizenship and the new fear of exclusion. The community that once voted to secure an identity may now vote to punish those it believes failed to protect it.