The ongoing debate over West Bengal’s economic and industrial performance took a heated turn on Wednesday, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) exchanging sharp accusations and counterclaims. The disagreement centres on whether the state has witnessed industrial growth or decline under the tenure of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
Leaders from the TMC asserted that West Bengal has seen a remarkable surge in industrial activity since Banerjee assumed office, with the number of companies in the state nearly doubling over the past 14 years. According to Bengal’s Industry Minister, Shashi Panja, official records show that the tally of companies with registered offices in the state rose from 1,37,156 in 2011 to 2,50,343 in 2025. She further highlighted that in just the last six years, 44,040 new companies have been incorporated in Bengal, while only 1,742 companies relocated their registered offices outside the state during this period.
Panja accused the BJP of deliberately running “fake campaigns” aimed at tarnishing Bengal’s industrial image, insisting that the state has experienced a “wave of development” under the current administration—an achievement the BJP “cannot match.” She dismissed the opposition’s criticism as “lies, half-truths, and propaganda” intended to mislead the public.
The BJP, however, painted a starkly different picture. Amit Malviya, the party’s IT cell chief, argued that simply registering a company’s office in Bengal “is not the same as running a thriving industry.” He alleged that the state is plagued by boarded-up factories, the flight of businesses, eroding investor confidence, and a gradual slide from being an industrial powerhouse to becoming an economic cautionary tale under Mamata Banerjee’s leadership.
Malviya cited figures that, according to the BJP, reveal the real extent of the problem: between April 2011 and March 2025, a total of 6,688 companies shifted their registered offices out of West Bengal, including 110 publicly listed companies. Describing the trend as “a mass exodus”, he rejected the notion that this could be dismissed as a mere paperwork anomaly, instead framing it as evidence of deep-rooted industrial decline.
The exchange underscores the starkly divergent narratives that both parties are pushing in the run-up to future political battles—one projecting Bengal as a state on the rise, the other portraying it as a cautionary example of lost industrial potential.
