As West Bengal races toward the 2026 Assembly elections, the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) has increasingly resorted to misinformation, half-truths, and outright falsehoods to shape the political narrative, according to multiple reports, Opposition charges, and fact-checking initiatives. From the SIR-NRC fearmongering to fake food bans, from inflated infiltration denials to unsustainable welfare promises, the TMC’s 2026 campaign, led by its top two leaders—Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee— has been accused of relying heavily on misinformation.
At the heart of the TMC’s disinformation drive is its aggressive campaign against the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. The party has repeatedly equated the SIR with the National Register of Citizens (NRC), warning voters that the process will lead to “detention camps” and mass deletion of legitimate Bengali voters. “TMC is misleading people,” charge BJP, Congress and CPI(M) leaders, accusing the ruling party of deliberately spreading misinformation to intimidate voters and secure a fourth term through measures more foul than fair.
Over the past six months, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has led massive protests against the SIR, even as the Supreme Court repeatedly upheld the exercise and provided clear constitutional remedies for those wrongly excluded. “The SIR has constitutional provisions that till the end, if any wronged person seeks redressal, they can take legal recourse and appeal,” said Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis, defending the process while campaigning for the BJP in Kolkata. He added: “Those whose names were deleted for rightful reasons did not protest. Why does only the TMC have an issue?”
Despite no evidence of detention camps or mass deletions, the TMC’s “Banglar Vote Raksha” initiative has framed the SIR as an existential threat, a tactic Prime Minister Narendra Modi called a “conspiracy” reminiscent of similar ploys in Assam and Puducherry.
Another prominent falsehood peddled by the TMC is the claim that a BJP victory will impose a blanket ban on fish and meat consumption in West Bengal. The party has held rallies, distributed pamphlets, and aired advertisements, warning that “BJP will stop you from eating fish and mutton.” Senior BJP leaders, including Union Minister Sukanta Majumder and state president Samik Bhattacharya, have repeatedly debunked this, stressing that “there won’t be any fish ban” and that the BJP’s stance is limited to restricting beef and cattle smuggling only.
Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma accused the Trinamool of “spreading misinformation” on meat and fish consumption, alleging Mamata Banerjee is “worried that once a BJP government is formed in West Bengal, the beef trade here will stop”. In his campaign in Cooch Behar, he even invited Mamata Banerjee to Assam to share a fish meal with him.
The Trinamool Congress also launched a vigorous campaign accusing the BJP of “peddling lies” about large-scale infiltration of Bangladeshis into West Bengal. At a Singur rally in January 2026, the party claimed authorities had “yet to detect a large number of Bangladeshis” in the SIR exercise, dismissing Prime Minister Modi’s infiltration figures as fabrications. However, electoral data and law enforcement reports indicate thousands of foreign-national identifiers have been flagged in border districts, even as the TMC denies the scale. The party’s narrative ignores evidence while portraying itself as the sole protector of Bengali identity, despite the BJP’s counter-charge that the TMC is itself “conspiring to enlist infiltrators as voters”.
Speaking at a rally in Murshidabad on April 11, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated: “As the elections draw closer, the Trinamool has begun to perceive their defeat as inevitable; consequently, in the days ahead, they will resort to conspiracies. A similar ploy was recently executed in Assam, and the same was done in Puducherry.” He warned of attempts to spread misinformation through fabricated videos generated using artificial intelligence, emphasising, “We must not fall victim to such lies.”
A video purporting to show a TMC worker being assaulted by Hindu voters in Murshidabad ahead of the polls was widely shared on social media. Fact-checkers traced it to Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, dating to the anti-Agnipath protests of June 2022—confirmed by a signboard visible in the footage reading “Telephone Colony Nagar Nigam Varanasi.” Old videos, re-labelled and re-circulated, have become a staple of the information environment heading into polling day.
The TMC’s campaign slogan this year—Jotoi koro hamla, abar jitbe Bangla (attack us all you like, Bengal will win again)—casts the party as the defensive bulwark of Bengali identity. Framing the BJP as “Banglabirodhi jamidar” (anti-Bengal feudal lords), the party’s campaign content positions Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee as the sole defender of Bengal and Bengali pride. The construction is emotionally resonant but, critics argue, deliberately distracting—a culture-war framing designed to deflect scrutiny of the party’s governance failures.
The most recent flashpoint came last week, when the BJP’s West Bengal unit formally accused the ruling party of planting fabricated polling data in the media. A report in a prominent Kolkata daily claimed that BJP internal surveys showed the saffron party could win between 115 and 125 seats, fewer than the required majority mark of 148.
The BJP was swift and unequivocal in its denial. “There is no such internal survey of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The overwhelming support for the BJP in West Bengal has clearly unnerved the Trinamool Congress, which is now planting such scurrilous stories to distract from the real issues,” the party stated in an official release, which was amplified by its national IT cell chief Amit Malviya.
Even Trinamool’s I.N.D.I.A ally, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, at a Raiganj rally, said: “Mamata-ji says she has created crores of jobs, but 84 lakh youths applied for unemployment allowance in the state. The people of Bengal are being fooled.”
Says veteran journalist Suman Chattopadhyay: “These episodes are far from isolated. It points to a deeper, more systematic pattern: a ruling party that, entering its fourth consecutive election with the burden of anti-incumbency and massive corruption charges, has opted for the manufacture of narrative over the marshalling of facts.”
The Trinamool planned and meticulously formulated its approach months ago. It built a decentralised social media cell that functions simultaneously as a crisis-management unit, mini-newsroom and campaign-planning cell.
It formally launched its 2026 campaign with a youth-driven digital initiative titled “Ami Banglar Digital Joddha,” unveiled by party general secretary Abhishek Banerjee. The initiative was framed as a bid to counter what the party called the BJP’s “anti-Bengal narrative” in the digital arena, mobilising Bengal’s youth to “reclaim” the state’s online space.
The scale of the operation has been considerable. The TMC social media ecosystem has produced more than 10,000 reels and short videos, disseminated across platforms through a combination of official channels, volunteer networks and independent influencers aligned with the party.
The party’s mobile app, Didi’r Doot (Didi’s Messenger), functions as a realtime mobilisation and task-assignment tool for its cadre. “These digital volunteers are tasked with countering misinformation, challenging divisive narratives and amplifying Bengal’s progressive voice across social media platforms,” close Mamata aide Aroop Biswas told The Sunday Guardian.
Yet critics contend that what the party frames as “counter-misinformation” operations are, in practice, vehicles for producing and spreading it.
Trinamool’s IT cell chief Debangshu Bhattacharya, speaking to The Sunday Guardian, described the strategy as essentially retaliatory—“tit-for-tat,” as he put it—projecting failures onto BJP-ruled states. The line between rebuttal and fabrication, observers note, has grown dangerously thin.
From fabricating fears about voter registration to spinning false narratives on food bans and infiltration, the ruling party’s campaign strategy appears built more on deception than credible governance records.
For a party that once prided itself on street-level mobilisation and Mamata Banerjee’s personal connect with voters, this shift to a machine-driven information campaign reflects both the growing sophistication of electoral warfare and the underlying anxiety of a party no longer confident that its record can speak for itself.
