Eyeing 2026 Assembly polls, Abhishek Banerjee to visit Bengal in November end

Kolkata: Trinamool Congress General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee will visit North Bengal districts in November to monitor the party’s organisational preparations for the 2026 state Assembly polls. Sources in the Trinamool Congress said that Banerjee will begin his tour from Cooch Behar on November 25. Banerjee’s programmes were scheduled in several districts of north Bengal, including Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri and North Dinajpur.

In addition to reviewing the progress of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of West Bengal’s electoral rolls, Banerjee will also examine the work of the war rooms and party camps set up in each Assembly constituency. According to the party sources, Banerjee will discuss the election preparations in detail with the district leadership. “The party’s booth-level agents or BLAs are supervising the filling of the enumeration forms, as a large number of people are seeking help from party workers in filling such forms.

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Before starting this process, Abhishek Banerjee had clearly instructed in a virtual meeting that we would have to be there for the people in 6,200 party camps across the state,” said the party sources. Banerjee will visit the war rooms and camps of the districts and talk to party workers on the spot. Besides, he will review the organisational preparations and give necessary instructions.

It is also learnt that a separate report will be prepared for each district. Apart from this, speculation was rife about another ‘Trinamoole Naba Jowar’ (mass outreach campaign) programme to be undertaken ahead of the Assembly polls. It has been speculated that Banerjee may announce this campaign in a new format during his visit to North Bengal.

It may be recalled that in 2023, Banerjee had undertaken a two-and-a-half-month-long mass outreach campaign named ‘Trinamoole Naba Jowar’ where he extensively campaigned across the state through rallies, padyatras and public meetings. The campaign was highly successful as the Trinamool Congress recovered lost ground in Bengal in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

Out of 42 Lok Sabha seats in Bengal, the Trinamool Congress won 29 seats, seven more than its tally of 22 seats in the 2019 general elections. At the same time, the BJP has an upper hand in North Bengal when it comes to Assembly polls. In the 2021 state Assembly polls, the BJP bagged 30 of the 54 Assembly seats in the eight north Bengal districts, even as the TMC retained power in Bengal. Therefore, in a bid to change the party’s fortune in North Bengal, Banerjee laid special focus on this region, and this upcoming visit assumes significance in that regard.