In two West Bengal Assembly seats where observers have historically tracked the voting behaviour of minority residents as a bellwether, the Bharatiya Janata Party secured victory — leaving commentators to weigh whether that shift reflected a deliberate choice by voters or circumstances that shaped how they cast their ballots. In both constituencies, faith-based mobilisation delivered results that fell short of what had been anticipated.
At both Nandigram and Rejinagar, the vote tallies recorded by the BJP proved wide enough that even a unified count drawing on every rival party and independent candidate would not have been sufficient to close the gap.
Hasi Rani Rath — whose son Chandranath Rath, a party worker and close associate of state Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, died from a gunshot wound on May 6 — ran as the BJP's candidate in Nandigram, a constituency where voters affected by political violence represented a potential source of electoral support for her. Tallying the final count, Hasi drew 1,64,427 votes while Congress nominee Milan Pradhan received 41,674, leaving a gap of 1,22,753 between the two candidates. Six of the nine people who stood for election belonged to minority communities. The BJP nominee's vote tally outpaced the combined total of every other contender in the race.
Of the fifteen people who stood for election in Rejinagar, ten belonged to minority communities. Combined vote totals from every other candidate in the contest fell short of the figure recorded by the BJP nominee.
Both constituencies fell open through vacancy and were subsequently put to by-elections. Holding onto Babanipur after the 2026 Assembly elections, Suvendu Adhikari left the Nandigram seat open rather than continuing to occupy both constituencies he had captured. Rejinagar opened up for a bypoll through a different route: Humayun Kabir, who leads the Aam Janata Unnayan Party and had secured victories in two constituencies, chose to hold onto Nowda, leaving the Rejinagar seat unoccupied.
Victories in two West Bengal Assembly constituencies and a Lok Sabha seat in Assam were credited by the Prime Minister to the efforts of party workers on the ground.
Voting patterns at the Nagaon Lok Sabha constituency in Assam told a notably distinct story. Fourteen of those fifteen contenders vying for the Nagaon seat came from two broad groupings, with eleven drawn from minority communities and four from elsewhere.
A foreigner determination against Mumtaz Begum, resulting in her deportation to Bangladesh, was handed down by authorities in Nagaon district. A bench of the Gauhati High Court has issued instructions to the Ministry of External Affairs, calling on the ministry to track down her whereabouts and arrange for her to be brought back. A provisional payment of two lakh rupees was also directed toward her husband as interim relief.
Analysts have noted that a consolidated opposition front — drawing together rival parties and independent candidates from minority communities — could have placed the BJP at an electoral disadvantage in Assam, a dynamic that did not materialise in the Bengal bypolls. Taken together, the votes cast for Congress and the AIUDF reached 7,01,617 — representing 49.12 per cent of the total polled — a tally that fell short of the BJP candidate's 7,14,349 by a margin of 12,732 ballots. Ballots cast for independent candidates added up to 23,763, a share amounting to roughly 1.6 per cent of all votes counted. Pooling those ballots behind a single opposition contender would have altered the numerical outcome.
Numbers drawn from that kind of methodology remain hypothetical — they shed no light on how those same voters would have cast ballots under a single, consolidated contest. Across the two West Bengal constituencies, vote tallies from every opposition party and independent candidate, pooled together, would not have reached the threshold needed to displace the BJP.
A margin of 1,22,753 votes separated Hasi from the candidate who finished second. A Nandigram victory in 2016 came during Adhikari's tenure as a TMC member. Minority-community voters account for around 27 per cent of the constituency's electorate — a statistic Adhikari cited in support of his assertion that those communities had voted for the BJP, though no independent analysis of the result has confirmed that reading. Shankharavh Sarkar of the BJP took Rejinagar by a margin of 75,816 votes, in a constituency where minority communities make up a substantial share of the electorate.
Data from the Sabar Institute show that voters removed from seven supplementary rolls in Nandigram were overwhelmingly Muslim, at a rate of 95.5 per cent. The institute's review drew only from those specific lists, leaving deletions recorded elsewhere in the constituency outside the scope of its findings.
Residents of Assam and Bengal have reported feeling squeezed between competing communal pressures, a tension that intensified following public use of the "Mian Muslim" slogan. Outreach drives, content takedowns, and organised public pressure appear to have contributed to some members of the group stepping back from religious identity — though the extent of that shift and the full range of factors behind it remain unclear.
Communal divisions, analysts have noted, appeared to tilt electoral outcomes toward the BJP while leaving opposition parties without a unifying figure capable of consolidating their vote base. In Assam especially, questions surrounding language have drawn competing views and sparked ongoing disagreement. People whose Assamese carries traces of Bengali speech patterns are labelled "Miya Muslims" — a term applied to those said to have roots in Bangladesh.
Residents of minority communities across Bengal and Assam — navigating questions of identity, livelihoods, and political participation simultaneously — face a period of adjustment before daily life stabilises. Three constituencies — Nandigram, Rejinagar, and Nagaon — stand among the clearest illustrations of how that pattern has played out.
