From her grand stage at Metro Channel in the heart of Kolkata, Mamata Banerjee on Saturday declared war on the BJP ahead of Assembly elections in West Bengal.
The gloves came off after President Droupadi Murmu attacked Mamata for administrative lapses leading to a confusion over the venue of her pre-scheduled meeting with the Adivasi community. The President also took deep umbrage at the Chief Minister for not showing up at the function where she was chief guest. Mamata, on dharna at the Metro Channel since Friday, retorted that the President should be careful not to get trapped into playing politics at the behest of the BJP.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned the episode in a tweet that is sure to enrage Mamata and trigger one of the ugliest brawls ever between the BJP and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief and West Bengal Chief Minister. The brawl is likely to go south with Mamata mocking the BJP at the Centre as a government in power at the mercy of Chandrababu Naidu, one she could easily unseat. In any case, she declared, after the West Bengal polls, she would launch an offensive to dislodge the BJP from Delhi.
Was it coincidence that Mamata threw down the gauntlet from her dharna platform at Metro Channel? This venue is a popular site for political parties for staging protests. For Mamata, it is special.
From here, she launched perhaps the biggest agitational movement of her life that ultimately catapulted her to the Chief Minister’s chair. That was the Singur agitation against the Tata Nano plant in 2006. She returned to this venue on Friday. The timing was perfect: on the eve of the 2026 Assembly election which the three-time Chief Minister hopes to sweep.
A brief history of Metro Channel
Metro Channel in Kolkata is a short strip of street in the heart of the city, at the crossing of two arterial roads that is loosely called Dharmatala.
The last time Mamata sat on dharna at Metro Channel was in February 2019 to protest the CBI raid on the home of one of her top cops, Rajeev Kumar. It was an unprecedented move—a sitting Chief Minister on a sit-in protest to defend a bureaucrat under the scanner of central agencies. Rajeev Kumar was then Commissioner of Kolkata Police.
On Friday, when Mamata launched her latest dharna at Metro Channel, the retired officer was on stage with her as a TMC Rajya Sabha MP in waiting. She had nominated him last week.
But nothing can be more dramatic than Mamata's first Metro Channel dharna in December 2006. It made history. It began with the fiery leader going on a 26-day hunger strike against the Left government's decision to grab farmland for factory at Singur. That eventually snowballed into the milestone movement that unseated the 34-year-old Communist government five years later and catapulted her to the Chief Minister's chair.
Will Mamata's third Metro Channel dharna guarantee a repeat? A fourth term in the Chief Minister's chair? Especially at a time when the BJP is working overtime to jinx it?
SIR and the Raj Bhavan rejig
The BJP, after its middling showing in the last two elections of 2021 and 2024, has mounted a full-blown attack on the Trinamool Congress (TMC) for the third time before Assembly polls 2026. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls ordered by the Election Commission of India (ECI) is viewed by the TMC as long-term BJP strategy aimed at denting its vote banks. The "logical discrepancy" factor in the SIR has slowed down the enumeration of voters in the state so badly, even the Supreme Court has had to take the extraordinary step of putting judicial officers from West Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand on the job.
Despite such extraordinary efforts, some estimates suggest it could take another eight weeks to wrap up the SIR, thus putting into jeopardy the timeline for the declaration of dates for the elections and the elections themselves, all of which need to be done and dusted by May 7, 2026.
In such fraught times, the abrupt resignation of West Bengal governor CV Ananda Bose and the post-haste deployment of the Tamil Nadu governor RN Ravi in his place was pure shock and awe, the tactic helmed—at least Mamata is convinced—by the BJP. The TMC is deeply suspicious that the series of events is pointing to the imposition of President's Rule in West Bengal.
The state has seen President's Rule four times, between 1968 and 1977. But, today, socially, culturally and politically, President's Rule will most likely boomerang on the BJP. The BJP knows that. So, the strategy behind the Raj Bhavan rejig remains clouded.
Mamata has not spelt out her thoughts on this clearly but has lost no opportunity to mock the BJP for its move. CV Ananda Bose, Mamata has said, was "threatened" into resigning and RN Ravi she has described a "parading BJP cadre" who was ticked off by the Supreme Court for his actions as Tamil Nadu governor. Bengal, she has said, as if in warning, is different.
'Different' Bengal
Indeed, politically, change is not constant in West Bengal. Change happens, but slowly.
The Left Front ruled the roost for 34 years till 2011. The TMC took about a dozen years to unseat it in 2011. The BJP began gathering steam in Bengal only from 2019 when its tally in Parliament jumped from 2 to 18 MPs. In 2021, the BJP got 77 seats, far behind TMC’s 215. However, the difference in vote share—10 per cent—was a boost for the BJP. In 2024, the number of BJP MPs fell from 18 to 12 in 2024, but the vote share narrowed to 7 per cent. For the BJP, therefore, 2026 is a do-or-die election, meriting every trick in the book against the TMC.
But Mamata has found a winning formula that is delivering results for her time and again: social welfare politics. Especially targeting women. First came Kanyasree that gave girl students stipends to go to school. Then she rolled out Lakshmir Bhandar in 2021, which is today putting Rs 1500 each month into the bank accounts of 2 crore women.
In this budget was announced Yuvasree, a scheme giving Rs 1500 per month for five years to jobless matriculate youth—men or women—aged 18 to 41. Yuvasree was planned with an eye on elections and originally supposed to launch in August. But the date was shifted, first to April 1 and on Saturday to March 7. Mamata announced this from the Metro Channel dharna stage. The money would reach the bank of beneficiaries with immediate effect.
The BJP calls it a disgraceful dole and an admission of unemployment in the state. It is promising Rs 3000 per month as Lakshmir Bhandar. The charge that the TMC is encouraging "ghuspeitiya" or illegal infiltrators from across the border is a constant, as is minority appeasement and the threat to Hindus on West Bengal.
Now, after the showdown over the President, a fresh front has opened in the battle between the BJP and TMC. It promises to be a battle royale.
