West Bengal Assembly Elections 2021

The high-stakes West Bengal assembly elections are being held in eight phases.For the BJP, the challenge is to live up to its performance in the parliamentary polls, whereas the TMC will try hard to regain its lost political ground.

It will be the first electoral contest between the two parties since the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, which saw the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerging as the main opposition in the state, with 18 of the 42 seats in its kitty, just four less than that of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC).

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has approved a tie up with the Congress for the ongoing polls. This was seen as a 'tactical' move to gain some lost ground in a state which the Left ruled for an uninterrupted 34 years.

In the previous elections, Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress retained power in the state while the BJP won 3 of the 294 elected seats.

Issues like the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the NRC issue, the differences between the Centre and the state government in the fight back against Covid and allegations of minority appeasement are few of the issues dominating the elections.