Mamata Banerjee’s assumption that Bengali nationalism could block anti-incumbency and Hindutva may be optimistic The Trinamool Congress (TMC) government in West Bengal is a unique specimen in understanding anti-incumbency. Welfare schemes that usually make incumbents popular have added to the anti-incumbency woes of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, as the workers of her party made those the easy and only option for rent-seeking. ‘Cut money’, or the cut for TMC local leaders on welfare disbursement, is the most important reason for anti-incumbency in the State. The unaccountable nature of power at the panchayat level after the 2018 elections were rigged by the ruling party, made it into an apparatus of extraction rather than a dispenser of patronage. The balance between patronage and extraction, which sustains political parties, was lost. Second, Ms. Banerjee, sought to compensate for her past alliances with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), by an overuse of Muslim symbolism, which has caused a backlash among Hindus and Muslims.