Kolkata, Mar 31 (PTI) The ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal has turned the heat on its own organisational apparatus, directing corporators to intensify fieldwork and warning that ward-wise performance would decide their political future.
As the first phase of the West Bengal assembly election formally got underway with a gazette notification issued and nominations opening, the TMC leadership has asked councillors, mayors and municipal heavyweights to step out of their offices and return to the streets.
They have been warned that their political future will depend on how their wards perform in the assembly election. Party insiders said the instruction has come from the top leadership.
According to senior leaders, municipal representatives across the state have been told to spend time in the field every day, accompany candidates in door-to-door campaigns, attend booth meetings and maintain direct contact with voters.
Their performance, however, will not be measured merely by visibility.
The party is preparing a ward-wise assessment of how much time each councillor spends on campaigning, how many homes they visit, how active local workers remain under that councillor’s watch and, above all, whether the party can secure a lead in the ward.
“Everyone has been told that the first and last identity of a councillor is that of a Trinamool worker,” a senior leader told PTI.
The directive comes at a time when the TMC is increasingly worried about signs of erosion in its urban base.
While the party remains electorally formidable across large parts of rural Bengal, the 2024 Lok Sabha election exposed chinks in its armour in Kolkata and several adjoining urban and industrial pockets.
In a number of municipal wards in Kolkata, Howrah, North 24 Parganas and the industrial belt, the BJP had either secured a lead or narrowed the TMC’s advantage sharply.
For the TMC leadership, that trend was politically significant because these are precisely the areas where councillors are expected to be the party’s most visible face.
Instead, there is a growing perception within the party that several municipal leaders have become inaccessible, complacent and detached from the neighbourhoods that once sustained them.
Some leaders privately admit that after successive victories in municipal elections, a section of councillors began to believe that holding office was enough and that organisational work could be left to others.
That assumption, the party now believes, may have contributed to the weakening of its urban connect.
The BJP, on the other hand, has steadily used allegations of corruption, civic dissatisfaction and Hindutva politics to make inroads into urban Bengal.
The Left and Congress may remain weaker organisationally, but together they too have shown signs of revival in select urban and semi-urban pockets where anti-incumbency against the ruling party is more visible.
It is against this backdrop that the TMC has decided to convert the assembly election into a political report card for its councillors.
Party sources said leaders who fail to deliver a lead from their own wards may struggle to secure renomination in the next round of municipal polls.
The warning is especially directed at those councillors who may be unhappy with the choice of assembly candidate or are nursing factional grievances.
The leadership fears that local resentment, if left unchecked, could translate into passive resistance during campaigning.
To prevent that, councillors have been told that remaining inactive, staying away from the field or failing to mobilise workers will invite disciplinary action.
Sources said both Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee are personally monitoring reports from urban centres and municipal wards.
For the party, the stakes go beyond simply retaining power in the assembly.
The TMC’s leadership believes that the 2026 election could be decided in the urban and semi-urban belt stretching from Kolkata to Howrah, Bidhannagar, Barrackpore, Hooghly, Asansol and Siliguri — regions where the party still has an organisational edge but public discontent is sharper than before.
By forcing councillors to return to the local clubs and neighbourhood networks that once formed the backbone of the party’s urban machine, the TMC is attempting to reconnect with middle-class and lower middle-class voters who have drifted away in recent years.
For years, the TMC’s municipal structure functioned as a parallel power centre, producing leaders who often wielded influence independent of the party organisation.
Now, with the toughest election in years approaching, the TMC leadership appears determined to remind municipal leaders that designation alone won’t decide political authority.
In Bengal’s election season, councillors are learning that the real test of power is no longer how large an office they occupy, but how many votes they can still bring from the neighbourhood. PTI PNT NSD
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