The 2021 West Bengal Legislative Assembly election for 292 constituencies of the 294 constituencies in West Bengal was held between 27 March to 29 April 2021 in eight phases.[1]
The incumbent All India Trinamool Congress government led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee won re-election by a large margin, despite opinion polls generally predicting a close race against the Bharatiya Janata Party, which became the Official Opposition but significantly underperformed expectations, winning 77 seats. The Sanjukta Morcha won just one seat, with the Indian National Congress and the leftist parties winning no seats.
These are the parties and alliances who contested 2021 West Bengal legislative assembly election:
Both factions of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) expressed support to Trinamool Congress for the assembly election.[2] Trinamool Congress allotted three seats in the Darjiling to GJM, However the two factions of GJM, namely Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (Bimal) and Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (Tamang) declared to field their candidates in each of the three seats.[3] Shiv Sena also endorsed Trinamool for the election.[4] Trinamool Congress supported Independent candidate in Joypur after their candidate's nomination got cancelled.[5] [6]
| Party | Symbol | Leader | Contesting Seats | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All India Trinamool Congress | AITC | Mamata Banerjee | 290 | |||
| Gorkha Janmukti Morcha | GJM | Unrecognised | Bimal GurungBinoy Tamang | 3 | ||
| Independent | N/A | 1 | ||||
On 28 January 2021 Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury announced that seat-sharing talks between the Congress and Left Front had concluded for 193 seats and that the remaining 101 seats would be decided at a later point.[7] [8] Out of the 193 seats agreed upon by 28 January, 92 went to Congress and 101 to the Left Front. These 193 seats included agreements over all the 77 seats the Congress and Left Front had won in the 2016 election. Left Congress and ISF announced that they will fight together in an alliance named as 'Sanyukta Morcha' from Brigade Rally on 28 February 2021.[9] (It is worth mentioning here that Abbas Siddiqui had also sought an alliance with the TMC, before becoming part of the “Sanjukta Morcha”, with the Congress and Left parties.[10]) ISF initially claimed that they have secured 30 seats from the Left Front's quota.[11] After the final seat sharing agreement was concluded, it was announced that the Left Front will contest on 165 seats, Congress will contest on 92 seats and ISF will contest on 37 seats.[12] [13]
Left Front chairman Biman Bose announced candidates for first and second-phase elections on 5 March alongside Congress and ISF leaders leaving seats for them in the list.[14] Indian National Congress revealed its first list of 13 candidates for the first two phases on 6 March.[15] Left Front announced its second list of candidates on 10 March, consisting of several new and young faces from AISF, AIYF, SFI and DYFI along with some well-known veteran faces including ex-ministers of Left Front govt and ex-MPs.[16] That day Biman Bose declared DYFI West Bengal state president Minakshi Mukherjee as the CPI(M) candidate for 'High-Profile' Nandigram Assembly constituency seat which was kept vacant in the first list published on 5 March.[17] Congress revealed its second list of 34 candidates on 14 March.[18] ISF released list of their first set of 20 candidates on the same day.[19] Sanyukta Morcha announced 15 more candidates on 17 March consisting of 9 from the Left, 2 from Congress and 4 from ISF camp.[20] Congress revealed its third list of 39 candidates on 20 March,[21] and two more on 22 March.
| Party | Symbol | Leader(s) | Bloc(s) | Contesting Seats[22] | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Communist Party of India (Marxist) | CPI(M) | Surjya Kanta Mishra[23] | Left Front | 138 | |||||
| All India Forward Bloc | AIFB | Debabrata Biswas | 21 | ||||||
| Revolutionary Socialist Party | RSP | Biswanath Chowdhury | 11 | ||||||
| Communist Party of India | CPI | Swapan Banerjee | 10 | ||||||
| Marxist Forward Bloc | MFB | Samar Hazra | 1 | ||||||
| Indian National Congress | INC | Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury | style="text-align:center" | - | 92 | ||||
| bgcolor= | Indian Secular Front | ISF | Abbas Siddiqui | style="text-align:center" | - | 32 | |||
Five hill-based parties pledged support to BJP ahead of the assembly election (Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF), Communist Party of Revolutionary Marxists, Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League (ABGL), Gorkhaland Rajya Nirman Morcha and SUMETI Mukti Morcha.[2] Hindu Samhati, a right wing organisation in West Bengal, withdrew their support from the BJP initially[24] and later declared to contest elections on its own.[25] However, in the end they supported the BJP.[26] BJP allotted a seat of Amta constituency to the president of Hindu Samhati to contest on BJP's symbol.[27] BJP also allotted the Baghmundi constituency, bordering Jharkhand, to the All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU).[28] [29]
| Party | Symbol | Leader | Seats | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bharatiya Janata Party | BJP | Dilip Ghosh | 293 | ||
| All Jharkhand Students Union | AJSU | Ashutosh Mahto | 1 | ||
Shiv Sena initially said that they would contest in around 100 seats,[30] but later on 4 March 2021 announced that they would not contest and will instead support Mamata Banerjee and TMC from outside.[31]
| Party | Symbol | Leader(s) | Contesting Seats | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Socialist Unity Centre of India (Communist) | SUCI(C) | Provash Ghosh | 190 | |||
| Janata Dal (United)[32] | JD(U) | Sanjay Verma | 16[33] | |||
| Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation[34] | CPI(ML)L | Dipankar Bhattacharya | 12 | |||
| Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Red Star[35] | CPI(ML) Red Star | K N Ramchandran | 3 | |||
| All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen[36] [37] | AIMIM | Asaduddin Owaisi | 6[38] [39] [40] | |||
| Bahujan Samaj Party[41] | BSP | Mayawati | 162 | |||
| National People's Party[42] | NPP | 3 | ||||