Did Lionel Messi influence TMC’s defeat in West Bengal?

When Argentine superstar Lionel Messi visited Kolkata in India’s football-crazy state of West Bengal for the first time in September 2011, the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) had just come to power after ending the 34-year rule of the Left Front. It was a ‘paribartan’ (change) that was welcomed by the masses and not least by the football fanatics of the state – strictly divided between supporters of Brazil and Argentina and Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo – who got to see the legend in action on the field.

Fast forward to December 2025, when the football icon again visited Kolkata as part of the GOAT Tour. TMC was well-entrenched in the state after 14 years at the helm and Messi’s visit provided another opportunity to score brownie points with young voters.

And then disaster struck.

Ministers and celebrities close to the ruling party, in a bid to outdo each other and get close to Messi, crowded around him as he entered the stadium, and the 80,000-odd avid fans - many of whom had paid over Rs18,000 (approx. Dh700) per ticket just to see their ‘football God’ - failed to even catch a glimpse as the visibly annoyed Argentine was rushed off the field. What followed thereafter was utter chaos as the infuriated fans uprooted seats – a symbolic move in hindsight – and hurled them on to the field with the police having a torrid time controlling the angry crowd.

'Remember this picture'

One of the photos that did the rounds the next day was of Aroop Biswas, West Bengal’s Minister of Power and Housing, who was seen cozying up to the Argentine and not leaving his side. A day before the second phase of elections on April 29, one saw several social media posts of that photo with the caption: ‘Remember this picture when you go out to vote tomorrow’.

On May 4, Biswas lost his Tollyganj seat by over 6,000 votes to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate, as did the sitting Bidhannagar Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) Sujit Bose, who served as Minister in the Department of Fire and Emergency Services. Bose was the architect behind installing the gigantic 70ft statue of Messi, one that hardly resembled the footballer, as he got the Argentine to remotely inaugurate the monstrosity from his hotel in a ceremony that lasted longer than it should have, partly resulting in the footballer’s curtailed presence on the ground.

The last straw

The Messi incident was probably the last straw for the disgruntled young voters of the state. They were already disillusioned by the state government’s handling of the RG Kar rape case - the mother of the victim won on a BJP ticket by defeating the TMC candidate in the Panihati constituency – or the Sandeshkhali incident, whose victim Rekha Patra also won on a BJP ticket from Hingalganj constituency.

While it is true that no political party is corruption-free, it’s also clear that amid the scams and the syndicates, the Messi fiasco certainly played its part in driving the last nail into TMC’s coffin.