BJP workers celebrate at the state party headquarters as trends show the party leading in the West Bengal Assembly elections, in Kolkata. (PTI Photo) 5 min read May 8, 2026 04:41 PM IST First published on: May 8, 2026 at 04:41 PM IST Fortress West Bengal has finally crumbled before the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It was one of the last hopes of liberals, and Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress (TMC) had managed to ward off the juggernaut for well over a decade with unusual grit. This switchover, incidentally, ends an unbroken historical record of half a century when Bengal invariably elected a party to power that was diametrically opposed to the one ruling Delhi. No one can deny that there was a strong anti-incumbency wave. Many were, however, confident that the secular DNA of Bengal would never allow a Hindi Hindu party to triumph. But people decided that the TMC had become worse than the Left Front government that it unseated in 2011, so intolerable was its misgovernance and corruption.…