The BJP lost two Matua-dominated seats — Ranaghat Dakshin and Bagda — in the Assembly by-election held on July 10 and leaders in the saffron camp attributed the defeat to complacency and lack of a well-knit organisation.
The BJP had won the two seats in 2021 defeating the Trinamool Congress. The BJP also secured leads of 36,936 votes in Ranaghat Dakshin and 20,614 votes in Bagda in the recent Lok Sabha elections.
"This is a setback for the party that won the support of the Matuas in the recent parliamentary polls. It is true that Trinamool used the powers of the ruling party to subdue the Opposition and turn the bypolls into a farce. But at the same time, it is a fact that complacency and a weak organisation left the TMC unopposed in the two constituencies," said a BJP leader in Nadia.
In Ranaghat Dakshin in Nadia district, Trinamool candidate Mukutmani Adhikari defeated the BJP’s Manoj Biswas by 39,048 votes. In Bagda of North 24-Parganas, Trinamool's Madhuparna Thakur defeated the BJP’s Binoy Kumar Biswas by 33,455 votes to become the youngest MLA.
Madhuparna is the daughter of Trinamool's Rajya Sabha member Mamatabala Thakur and a cousin of BJP MP and junior Union minister Shantanu Thakur.
Several BJP leaders in the two districts — Nadia and North 24-Parganas — said the results did not “reflect the people’s mandate” and accused the TMC of deploying intimidatory tactics to keep away supporters of the saffron camp from polling booths.
By making such an allegation, the BJP exposed the ground reality that it did not have the organisational might to take on the TMC, said a BJP leader in Bagda.
"Our voters were threatened, workers intimidated but it is equally true that activists on the ground did not have the backing of the party leadership to take on the TMC at both the places," he added.
Senior Trinamool leaders cautioned against reading too much into the victories in the Matua belt.
"One swallow doesn't make a summer. A united party has ensured victory but it would be too early to read the result as Matuas turning away from the BJP. Two years in a long time in politics and let us see how this victory pans out in 2026. But definitely, the victories are a morale booster for us," said a senior TMC leader in Calcutta.
The leader admitted the BJP or the Left-Congress Opposition was absent from the ground during the campaign and on polling day.
Trinamool winner candidate Mukutmani Adhikari, however, said: “BJP workers are mostly Matuas, who stopped working, realising the bankruptcy of the party’s ideals and policies.”
Promises of citizenship for the Matuas by the BJP helped it win two seats — Bongaon and Ranaghat — dominated by the community in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The party also bagged 10 of 14 Assembly seats in the two Lok Sabha constituencies in the 2021 elections.
Several BJP leaders blamed a divided party for the poor show in the bypolls.
Both in Ranaghat Dakshin and in Bagda, BJP workers were angry over the nomination of outsiders as candidates. This prompted a major section of the party to become inactive and it was more visible on the day of the voting as the party was not seen to resist Trinamool’s “strategy”.
“Trinamool managed the poll in their way. But everything was not right in our party too,” a dejected Binoy Kumar Biswas, BJP’s Bagda candidate said after the defeat.
There was strong anger about Biswas’s nomination in Bagda being an “outsider”.
“Since 2016, we have been urging for a local candidate. But our complacent leaders never realised the ground realities, rather exploited Matuas' support. The party did not try to learn from defeats in the Lok Sabha elections which was more because of poor selection of candidates ignoring the ground realities”, said Supriya Sikdar, a BJP leader and Bagda panchayat samiti member.
