Kolkata, April 29: In what would amount to one of the most stunning electoral mandates in Indian political history, the Praja exit poll for the West Bengal Assembly Elections 2026 has projected the Bharatiya Janata Party winning between 178 and 208 seats in the 294-seat assembly — a landslide majority that, if realised, would dwarf even the TMC’s historic 2021 victory of 213 seats and signal a complete collapse of Mamata Banerjee’s political dominance in the state.
The Praja projection significantly exceeds P-MARQ’s earlier estimate of 150-175 seats for the BJP, released earlier on Wednesday evening. If the two exit polls are read together, they establish a clear directional consensus — the BJP is headed for a majority, with the only question being the scale of its victory. Praja’s upper range of 208 seats would give the BJP a two-thirds supermajority in the West Bengal assembly, a result that no party has achieved in the state in the modern democratic era.
For the Trinamool Congress, the Praja numbers represent an existential electoral catastrophe. The party that swept 213 seats in 2021, won three consecutive assembly mandates, and built one of India’s most formidable state-level political machines under Mamata Banerjee would, on these projections, be reduced to a rump opposition. The implications for Mamata Banerjee’s political future — both within Bengal and on the national stage — would be profound.
The scale of the projected BJP surge points to a near-total consolidation of anti-TMC votes under the saffron banner, with the Left and Congress having failed to mount a credible third-front challenge. Across the two-phase election, the BJP had aggressively campaigned on the RG Kar Medical College rape and murder case, the law and order situation in the state, central government welfare schemes, and the promise of ending what it repeatedly described as TMC’s “syndicate raj.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally campaigned in the state and shared a stage with Ratna Debnath — the mother of the RG Kar victim and BJP’s Panihati candidate — in what became one of the defining images of the campaign.
Polling day itself on Wednesday was marred by widespread allegations of violence and electoral malpractice, with incidents reported from Panihati, Falta, Bally, Khanakul, and several other constituencies across the seven districts that voted in Phase 2. The BJP alleged systematic EVM tampering at multiple booths in Panihati, including ink smeared on the BJP button and tape placed over the BJP symbol. Separately, PIB Fact Check confirmed that a fake Ministry of Petroleum order falsely claiming a petrol and diesel price hike was viral on polling day — a document that several TMC-affiliated social media handles had amplified.
Exit polls are sample-based projections and carry an inherent margin of error. West Bengal’s complex social and geographic composition — spanning urban Kolkata, industrial Howrah, border districts of North and South 24 Parganas, and rural interiors — makes large-scale projection particularly sensitive to sampling assumptions. The official verdict for all 294 seats of the West Bengal Assembly Elections 2026 will be declared on May 2.