BJP Sounds the First Drumbeat in Harirampur, as West Bengal’s 2026 Battle Quietly Begins

January 07,2026

Political temperature is rising

Kamal Kumar Biswas

Senior Correspondent 

Long before the formal machinery of elections is set in motion, the BJP has begun engraving its political intent—quite literally—on the walls of Buniadpur, the municipal nucleus of West Bengal’s Harirampur Assembly constituency. Across multiple wards, party workers have launched an early campaign of wall writings, signaling that the contest for the 2026 Assembly elections has effectively begun.Conspicuously absent from these freshly painted slogans is the name of the BJP’s prospective candidate. The blank space functions as a deliberate ambiguity, amplifying speculation and underscoring a campaign that has announced its arrival without yet revealing its standard-bearer.

Harirampur, situated in South Dinajpur district, remains shaped by the decisive verdict of the 2021 Assembly elections. In that contest, the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) candidate, Biplab Mitra, secured 96,131 votes, accounting for approximately 51% of the total vote share. His nearest rival, BJP’s Nilanjan Roy, garnered 73,459 votes, or about 39%. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) candidate, Rafikul Islam, trailed far behind with 12,444 votes, roughly 7% of the vote.The final margin stood at a formidable 22,672 votes, cementing the Trinamool Congress’s dominance in the constituency.In the aftermath of that defeat, BJP leaders had pointed to internal discord as a critical factor, alleging that factional infighting and dissatisfaction over Roy’s perceived status as a political outsider had eroded the party’s grassroots cohesion. That internal turbulence, they argued, blunted what might otherwise have been a more competitive challenge.

Five years on, the geography remains the same, but the political temperature is rising. While the BJP has yet to disclose its candidate for Harirampur in 2026, the commencement of wall writing is widely seen as a symbolic escalation—an early declaration that the party intends to reclaim lost ground.The Trinamool Congress, for its part, appears unmoved. Leaders in the ruling camp have dismissed the BJP’s maneuvers as premature and inconsequential, reiterating their claim of “100 percent confidence” in retaining the seat.Yet in West Bengal’s intensely polarized political arena, walls often speak before ballots do. And in Harirampur, the silence where a candidate’s name should be may ultimately prove as revealing as any slogan painted in bold relief.