An illustrator’s sketchbook of the Bengal poll campaign: A state holds its breath

In Bengal, the air is thick with anticipation. The Trinamool Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party put up a strong fight, both equally determined, one to retain power in the state, the other to gain it.

The election results will be announced on May 4. If the BJP wins West Bengal, it will end 15 years of the Trinamool Congress’s rule and signal an ideological victory for a party that has long struggled to make inroads into the state’s politics and culture.

As the state went to the polls in two phases, I travelled around Kolkata, sketchbook in hand, attempting to capture the city’s many moods.

It is 4.30 pm on April 23 and 152 of West Bengal’s 294 constituencies are voting in the first phase of the assembly elections. In the BJP office in Kolkata’s Salt Lake, party workers mill about, presumably charged with important work that needs to be completed before the end of the day. Crisply uniformed guards stand at attention under a bright orange shamiana, keeping an eye on all entering or leaving the premises.

At the entrance sits a receptionist, dressed in a navy blue saree, hair pulled neatly back into a bun. She asks me to wait on one of the many chairs behind her until a media spokesperson can attend to me. Inside the party’s war room, West Bengal Chief Spokesperson Debjit Sarkar is surrounded by shuffling party workers, noting the day’s proceedings, before his evening press conference.

There has been record voter turnout: South Dinajpur, 93%; Cooch Behar, 92%, Birbhum and Murshidabad 91%, among others.

The BJP media room is professional and as well-equipped as the rest of the office. The press is as energetic as the party.

Questions are taken first in Bangla then Hindi. Sarkar takes individual requests in English after the conference is formally over. It’s hard to be sure because I can’t hear him from where I am seated.

The audience dissipates. The room feels a little more relaxed. Smiles are exchanged, jokes shared and newspaper bags of jhalmuri are passed around. Jhalmuri has been in the news lately after the prime minister, while campaigning in Jhargram district, stopped at a stall and bought some.

Reporters pack up their tripods and mics and head back probably to the newsroom. One of the journalists shares her bag of peanuts with me after I give her my jhalmuri. It is difficult to eat while drawing.

The last weekend before the state votes is action-packed. All the big-wigs are touring the city, prompting many WhatsApp forwards about which roads to avoid at what time of the day.

I visit Zakaria Street, a Muslim-majority neighbourhood in Central Kolkata, where Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Tejashwi Yadav is holding a meeting.

I perch in an aisle seat in the last row of chairs by the left of the stage. There are men all around and hardly any journalists. A large video camera on the street corner faces the stage. People are aware of my presence and careful to make sure I don’t feel uncomfortable.

A party worker informs the speaker on stage that Yadav is almost here. Everything comes to a halt and chants of “Tejashwi Yadav swagatam” fill the air.

A white SUV pulls up, dangerously close to the chair I am sitting on, and an entourage of men emerges in white kurtas, some of them wearing black sunglasses. The once-empty aisle beside me swells with people, phones in hand, recording the entry of the VIP into their neighbourhood.

It is difficult to tell where Yadav is, apart from the bulge in the crowd making way for his entourage to pass. The bulge pays no heed to the chairs, the audience and the puny woman with her sketchbook. It pushes us all into a corner.

I ose my bag and water bottle in the chaos, but spot some people gathering my belongings for me. I am relieved until I find out that my phone is missing too. I panic and look around, try calling it from a stranger’s number, but it is nowhere to be found.

After an unsuccessful search operation through the evening, I come to terms with the fact that my phone is gone for good.

My project, though, must go on.

Women watch from the windows as Yadav delivers a fiery speech about keeping divisive forces out of the state. He pauses for the azaan to pass, before returning to his call for support for “Didi”, as Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is known across West Bengal.

I sense an urgency on these streets that I have not felt elsewhere in my reporting journey.

It is the last Sunday before voting day and campaigning is in full swing.

I plan to visit two public events: a meeting with Mamata Banerjee on Camac Street in Central Kolkata, and Narendra Modi’s roadshow through various parts of North Kolkata.

Banerjee’s address, originally scheduled to begin at 4 pm, does not start until 6 pm. During this time, chairs covered in white cloth are moved to the barricaded section for VIPs while plastic chairs are placed outside the enclosure for the general public.

The chief minister’s arrival is much less chaotic than Yadav’s. The roads have been cleared out for her well in advance and a path is demarcated for her to make her way to the stage. Her white SUV is preceded and followed by other official cars, carrying the party’s top brass leaders: her personal bureaucratic padding.

Today she is speaking to a cosmopolitan crowd. We are sitting in front of Vardaan Market, an air-conditioned shopping complex that predates the malls in the city. It is run largely by the non-Bengali trader communities.

Mamata is acutely aware of the composition of her audience, and addresses them in a mix of broken Hindi and English, listing out what her party has done for each of the communities (Marwaris, Punjabis, Jains, Christians, and Muslims) living and working in the neighbourhood.

Though it is hard to get a glimpse of the leader in real time, her energy is palpable. As voting day nears, she seems to radiate with the adrenaline rush of a fighter fighting a good fight.

Stuck in the fully barricaded street, I am unable to leave until Banerjee’s meeting is over. I miss Modi’s roadshow and must make do with a hazy photograph from a friend who lives in the vicinity.

On April 27, I finally make my way to the office of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) next to a mosque on the nondescript Alimuddin street, in Central Kolkata’s AJC Bose Road area.

A life-sized portrait of Muzaffar Ahmed, also known as Kakababu, co-founder of the Communist Party of India, hangs on the first floor corridor of the office alongside portraits of other comrades. The office is also named after Ahmed.

The only screen in the room, a flat-screened Sony TV connected to a Tata Sky set top box, is placed on a movable stand with curtains on both sides. Four plants in red pots stand atop the stand.

There is a bust of Muzaffar Ahmed next to an A4-sized poster of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who served as the last CPI(M) chief minister of Bengal, on the ground floor courtyard of the premises. The poster reads “laal salaam” or red salute.

The media room, furnished with old wooden chairs and tables, is in stark contrast to the modernised facilities of the BJP and the Trinamool Congress.

The office is full of portraits of past comrades, honouring them in a way that I have not seen other parties do. Whatever its politics may be, it is clear that the party anchors its heroes in the lived realities and human stories of the people around us, as opposed to the larger than than life personas of the BJP and Trinamool Congress leaders.

It is April 28. Voting begins in under 24 hours. Campaigning has ended with the start of the “silent period”. I have visited the offices of the CPI(M) and BJP, and covered several Trinamool Congress events. Still, something nags at me to visit the Trinamool Congress party office. I wonder if a party’s office can reveal a lot about its politics.

I am not sure if I will be allowed in a day before polling. It feels like a sensitive moment to go knocking on their doors. But I decide to give it a shot anyway. The Trinamool Congress office, off the arterial EM Byepass road in Eastern Kolkata, feels like a dive bar from an Anurag Kashyap movie.

I push open a glass door with a circular glass handle to enter a large waiting area, with checkered black and white flooring, and bright halogen-esque lights. There are five to six men in the room, watching a TV news programme streaming archived videos of police officer Ajay Sharma dancing in a nightclub. An Uttar-Pradesh based officer, Sharma has been deployed as an observer by the Election Commission in the second phase of the polling in the state.

When I ask to meet a spokesperson, I am directed to the party’s media room on the first floor. Entering the room feels almost like stepping into a different dimension: each of its surfaces is covered in a different shade of blue and the walls have blown-up portraits of the chief minister, edited to match the colour of the wall.

The strangeness of the space, exacerbated by the lack of activity, loosens its grip on me once I start talking to some of the people around me. They are curious about what I am doing, and put the party logo on the TV screens for me to capture in my drawings.

I catch a glimpse of Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’Brien bidding farewell to some guests wishing him luck before the big day. I hear confident proclamations of “minimum 180” from outside, before O’Brien rushes out to shoot a video for social media, hoping to get it done before they lose the light.

As the clock strikes six, people start trickling out. They discuss the logistics of the bike ban, and whether it is still in effect or if it has been overruled by the Supreme Court. Some of them take bike taxis home.

The section is partitioned with a life-sized banner of the chief minister, with her heir apparent, Abhishek Banerjee. The banner holds one of the party’s central slogans for 2026, “Jotoi koro hamla, aabar jitbo Bangla” – no matter how much you attack us, we will win Bengal again.

I hear only the creaking of the airconditioner and the portent ticking of the clock.

Purvi Rajpuria is a writer, illustrator and podcaster from Kolkata.