The BJP won its first Lok Sabha seat in West Bengal back in 1998. A year later, it won its first Assembly seat in the state. Both victories came when it was the junior partner in an alliance.
Interestingly, the BJP's ally during those victories at the turn of the century was none other than the Trinamool Congress (TMC) led by Mamata Banerjee.
The 1998 Lok Sabha polls were the first elections to be contested by the TMC after its formation on January 1 that year.
The BJP's maiden entry to the Lok Sabha via West Bengal came from the Dum Dum seat where Tapan Sikdar defeated the CPI(M)'s Nirmal Kanti Chatterjee -- who had won from there three consecutive times -- by a thumping 1,37,405 votes.
The two parties allied with each other again in a 1999 bypoll in Ashoknagar won by Badal Bhattacharya, marking the BJP's first presence in the state assembly. In the Lok Sabha elections the same year, the BJP increased its tally to two seats, with Sikdar winning again.
That was the last time the BJP and TMC would be on the same side.
Badal Bhattacharya had defeated the CPM's Rekha Goswami by 9,498 votes. During his two-year stint in the Assembly until 2001, Chief Minister Jyoti Basu would repeatedly refer to him as a Bajrang Dal representative and hence call him Hanuman, Bhattacharya told The Telegraph.
The BJP subsequently drew a blank in the West Bengal assembly elections until 2014 when it finally gatecrashed into the House on its own by winning another bypoll.
The death of the sitting CPI(M) MLA Narayan Mukherjee led to that bypoll in Basirhat Dakshin.
Situated on the border with Bangladesh, the issue of illegal immigration touched a chord among the populace here.
The BJP's winning candidate was Samik Bhattacharya who defeated former footballer Dipendu Biswas, fielded by the TMC, by a slender 1,586 votes. Meanwhile, the CPI(M) finished a distant third.
In the assembly elections two years later, Biswas would turn the tables, defeating Bhattacharya by 24,058 votes.
The BJP did, however, increase its tally of MLAs to three in 2016 and then to 77 in 2021.
Denied a ticket by the TMC in 2021, a miffed Biswas would jump ship to the BJP, but the latter did not make him a candidate either.
He made a ghar wapsi to the TMC ahead of the 2026 polls. He still wasn't nominated. Nor was Bhattacharya who is now the BJP's state president in West Bengal.
