A househelp, a survivor of sexual harassment and a mother of a rape victim: Meet Kalita Majhi, Rekha Patra and Ratna Debnath who are the women stars of BJP’s West Bengal triumph

The 2026 West Bengal assembly elections have proven to be historic in many ways. This is the first time that the Bhartiya Janata Party has registered a victory in the state. Beyond the opposition’s ‘ECI is compromised’ noise, it is the BJP’s candidate selection and focus on real issues that propelled the party to 206 seats for its maiden triumph. BJP’s women candidates brought their own grassroots stories, carried pain and yearning to bring change that resonated with Bengali voters. From house help to MLA: BJP candidate Kalita Majhi defeated TMC candidate by a margin of 12,535  The BJP fielded a former house help, Kalita Majhi, from the Ausgram seat. Majhi secured 107692 votes and defeated the Trinamool Congress candidate Shyama Prasanna Lohar by a margin of 12535 votes. Before entering politics in 2021, Kalita Majhi worked as a domestic help earning around Rs 2,500 monthly from four households in the Guskara municipality. The BJP had fielded Majhi in the 2021 assembly elections, but she lost against the TMC candidate Abhedananda Thander back then. The BJP, however, did not abandon or sideline Majhi; rather, the party renominated her this time, and she defeated her TMC rival by an impressive margin. Majhi lost the 2021 election; however, she enjoyed a connection with the local people, which the BJP knew would translate into an electoral victory with the right campaigning and political messaging. Rekha Patra: From being the face of Sandeshkhali protests, losing the 2024 Lok Sabha election amidst TMC’s personal attacks, to winning Hingalganj in 2026 In electoral politics, a candidate’s winnability is the main factor in determining their nomination. However, some seats, some candidates and their stories are above the prospects of poll victories and defeats. BJP’s Rekha Patra has been one such candidate. Contesting from Hingalganj against TMC’s Ananda Sarkar, Rekha Patra won by a margin of 5421 votes, securing 100207 votes.  It must be recalled that Rekha Patra was the first woman in Sandeshkhali in North 24 Parganas, who had raised her voice and spearheaded the protests accusing TMC strongman Sheikh Shahjahan and his aides of land grabbing and sexual assault in 2024. In February 2024, hundreds of women in Sandeshkhali took to the streets to protest against land grabbing, non-payment of wages and sexual violence committed by Trinamool Congress goon Sheikh Shahjahan and his two aides, Shiba Prasad Hazra and Uttam Sardar. When Rekha Patra, a victim herself, came forward and led the protests against TMC goons, she was targeted by the party’s supporters. Later, when the BJP fielded her from Basirhat for the Lok Sabha election, the TMC leaked her sensitive personal information. Patra had lost the Lok Sabha election to her TMC rival, but she did not lose her party’s trust and commitment to support her fight against the TMC-linked perpetrators in the Sandeskhali land grabbing and sexual abuse matter. Fast forward to 2026, the BJP nominated Rekha Patra from the Hingalganj seat, and she defeated her TMC opponent. Ratna Debnath: The inspiring saga of the mother of the RG Kar College rape and murder victim, turning her pain into power In the Panihati seat, the BJP fielded not a seasoned politician, not a celebrity, but a mother who sought justice for her daughter but received disappointment from the TMC regime. The party nominated Ratna Debnath, the mother of the RG Kar rape-murder victim, from the Panihati seat. Debnath won by a wide margin of 28836 votes against TMC’s Tirthankar Ghosh. She received 87977 votes in total. In March this year, Ratna Debnath, the mother of the RG Kar rape-murder victim, spoke to the media and expressed her wish to contest the upcoming West Bengal Vidhan Sabha election on a BJP ticket. #WATCH | North 24 Parganas, West Bengal: BJP's winning candidate from Panihati Assembly Constituency, Mother of RG Kar Medical College rape and murder victim and BJP leader Ratna Debnath says, "This victory is the victory of the people of Panihati, of the entire Bengal. I… pic.twitter.com/cnwDKmIbVB— ANI (@ANI) May 4, 2026 Debnath’s chagrin stemmed from the TMC government’s failure to secure justice for her daughter, a junior doctor, who was brutally raped and murdered at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital. Addressing the media, Ratna Debnath had said that “women’s safety and security, and the well-being of people, are greatly compromised here in Bengal.” Ratna Debnath had vowed to uproot Trinamool Congress from West Bengal. After over a month, Debnath witnessed the fulfilment of her vow as both she and her party registered a thumping victory by demolishing the TMC’s evil empire. BJP did not politicise the women’s safety issue; it gave voice to the victims of TMC’s misrule and facilitated their quest to change the ‘system’ that failed them In over a decade of the Trinamool Congress’s rule in West Bengal, the besmirching of the dignity of women, political murders and brutalities, riots, and overall collapse of law and order, became the new norm. From crimes against women after the 2021 elections, Sandeskhali horror to the RG Kar rape-murder case, not only the people of Bengal but the entire India saw the systemic failure under Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s leadership. While TMC functionaries committed crimes with impunity, the party leadership gave them cover. It must be recalled how Mamata Banerjee attempted to downplay the harassment and sexual exploitation of women at the hands of Trinamool Congress goons. During a public meeting at Birbhum in February 2024, she dubbed the unrest in Sandeshkhali as a ‘minor incident’ and blamed the BJP and the media for amplifying the issue in the public discourse. At about 55:15 minutes into the programme, the West Bengal Chief Minister remarked, “An incident has happened or rather made to happen. First, they sent the ED (Enforcement Directorate), then its friend BJP, entered the scene.” In May 2024, Banerjee went on to claim that BJP “scripted” the Sandeskhali incident. “The entire Sandeshkhali incident was preplanned. The BJP had scripted it. The truth has been exposed. I have been saying this for a long time,” Banerjee said back then. In fact, Mamata Banerjee has a history of politicising, downplaying and victim-blaming in cases of sexual assault against women. In 2012, Banerjee dubbed the Park Street rape case involving an Anglo-Indian woman, Suzette Jordan, as ‘shajano ghotona‘ (concocted incident), which was allegedly ‘designed to malign the government.’ While TMC leaders kept casting aspersions on the victim’s character, a Kolkata Court upheld the rape charges and found the three accused guilty. In 2013, Banerjee blamed rising population and modernisation for rapes in West Bengal. In April 2022, Mamata Banerjee courted controversy after she tried to downplay allegations of brutal rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl as a ‘love affair’ gone wrong. In October 2025, a second-year MBBS student from Odisha was allegedly gang-raped by Apu Bauri, Firdos Sekh, Sekh Reajuddin and two others in a jungle area near Durgapur city. The failure of the TMC regime to safeguard women and even evoke trust that they will get justice can be understood from the fact that the rape survivor’s father had expressed fear that his daughter was not safe in West Bengal. “Trust has been lost. We don’t want her to stay in Bengal. She will pursue her education in Odisha,” he said. The NCRB report released in October 2025 highlighted how West Bengal, under a woman chief minister, had become highly unsafe for women. The report revealed that West Bengal recorded 34,691 cases of crimes against women under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Special and Local Laws (SLL). While this marked a marginal decline from 34,738 cases in 2022, the number is one of the highest in the country. The statistics translate to a crime rate of 71.3 cases per lakh female population. In the category of kidnapping and abduction of women – others (Sec. 363A, 365, 367, 368, 369 IPC), West Bengal recorded the highest, 2054 incidents out of the 7964 cases nationwide. Despite all this, the left liberal cabal hailed Mamata Banerjee as an icon of women’s empowerment, and covered her neglect of women’s issues with the “only woman Chief Minister” rhetorical shield. With such an opprobrious record of victim-blaming, Mamata Banerjee hardly took women’s safety seriously. No wonder Banerjee did not even take the protests by RG Kar doctors in 2024 seriously. In fact, the TMC government persecuted junior doctors, who led protests against the gruesome rape and murder case at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital. The doctors who participated in protests faced legal, financial and professional troubles. They faced undue transfer, court cases and police FIRs for seeking justice and accountability. They were booked for ‘causing grievous hurt to police personnel’ and ‘unlawful assembly.’ After all this, when Ratna Debnath announced her BJP candidature and vow to uproot TMC from Bengal, she was called ‘India’s Erika Kirk’ by pro-TMC trolls online. However, Debnath’s victory showed that the people of Panihati understood her pain, her fight, and the BJP’s honest intentions beyond electoral winnability. Undoubtedly, TMC has a symbolic female leadership, but the party failed women at the grassroots. For political gains, the TMC government allowed a culture of impunity in several pockets across the state. The victories of Kalita Majhi, Ratna Debnath and Rekha Patra demonstrate that the TMC had a clear disconnect with reality; their arrogance and past effectiveness of intimidation tactics blinded them to the widespread anger women had towards the party. BJP did not miss the bus and fielded the victims of TMC’s misrule as faces of resistance. The BJP challenged the notion that only the elite can represent women’s issues by fielding women from humble backgrounds and with first-hand experience of TMC’s misrule, paving their way to the legislature. Call it poetic justice that while these women with no political background won big and BJP’s overall women candidates hit a strike rate of 65%, Mamata Banerjee lost her home turf of Bhabanipur to BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari by a margin of 15,000 votes. After the final round of counting, Adhikari secured 73,463 votes, while Banerjee trailed with 58,349.