Mamata Banerjee, the chief of the Trinamool Congress (TMC), expressed strong confidence in her party's performance in the upcoming West Bengal assembly elections, scheduled for May 2, 2026. She claimed that TMC would secure more than 200 seats, despite exit polls suggesting a better performance for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Banerjee criticized these exit polls as attempts to manipulate the stock market and urged her party's counting agents to disregard them. During a meeting with TMC leaders, she emphasized the need for vigilance at counting centers, especially in close races where candidates could lose by a narrow margin of 200-300 votes. She instructed agents to demand recounts in such cases and to report any unusual activities, referencing past incidents of alleged malpractice, such as the power outage at the Nandigram counting center in 2021. Tensions were reported at two counting centers in Kolkata due to concerns over transparency regarding the storage of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) from the April 29 polls.