Saffron clouds of aabir hung over counting centres across West Bengal on Monday as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was headed for a huge victory in the Bengal Assembly elections 2026. The party’s supporters celebrated not just with drums and dancing, but with a distinctly Bengali spread that carried its own political messaging.

At street corners and party offices alike, workers broke into spontaneous celebrations, beating drums, distributing laddoos, and smearing colour on one another.

At the BJP’s office on 6, Murlidhar Sen Lane in Kolkata , however, the mood was more local in flavour as supporters tucked in jhaalmuri, echoing a moment from the campaign trail when Prime Minister Narendra Modi had stopped to eat the snack in Jhargram.

That gesture had sparked a political back-and-forth, with Mamata Banerjee calling it stage-managed, and Modi retorting, “Jhaalmuri maine khaya, par jhaal TMC ko laga (It was I who ate the Jhaalmuri but it was the TMC, which felt its heat).”

During the West Bengal election…