West Bengal Assembly Elections 2021: Does a ‘Party Society’ Really Subsume the Politics of ‘Identity’ and ‘Development’? While West Bengal’s “exceptionalism” is often touted to explain the claimed lack of communal and caste-based politics in the state, the rise of populist forces has somehow managed to take advantage of identitarian fault lines without creating space for democratic political mobilisation of marginalised sections. Elections for 294 seats of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly are scheduled to be held between 27 March and 29 April 2021 in eight phases. The key political players in the upcoming elections include: (i) The All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) and its allies, including the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha;