[3] The Trinamool Congress led United Progressive Alliance won an absolute majority of seats in the state in a historic win marking the end of 34-year rule of Left Front, the longest-serving democratically elected communist government in the world, a fact that was noted by international media.

[4][5][6][7] Notably, the incumbent Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee lost even his Jadavpur seat to Trinamool's Manish Gupta, which was considered to be an electoral bastion of the CPI(M).

[9] The 2011 election adopted re-drawn electoral constituencies based on the 2001 census, following the 2002 Delimitation Commission of India, whose recommendations were approved in February 2008.

One official from the central ruling coalition was quoted as saying that "There is a tacit understanding between these two critical allies that there will be no decision on the Land Acquisition Bill until the results of West Bengal state elections are clear.

"[14] The issue of land acquisition for development also created a battle zone like situation in the villages between armed cadres of the ruling CPM and the Maoists.

During the general election the issue of the founding of Gorkhaland as separate from West Bengal gained prominence along with the victory of Jaswant Singh from Darjeeling constituency for the Bharatiya Janata Party, and supported by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (which advocates the creation of a separate Gorkhaland for ethnic Nepalis as opposed to ethnic Bengalis).

[19] During the first phase, the Indian border with Bangladesh at the Maldaha constituency was sealed from 16 April, two days before the election, to "prevent miscreants from causing trouble."

One-hundred and twelve companies of central paramilitary forces were delegated to man 260 voting booths, 150 of which were decreed to be "sensitive."

[24] It is believed he left the INC because he was tied to the murder of Intrajit Singh, an AITMC supporter, who was killed on the day of the local 2015 Katwa election and wanted to be extricated out of the incident.

Al Jazeera said that the only hope for a Communist resurgence is "if Banerji, whose performance as India's railway minister has not been overly impressive, fails in her position of governance."

It also said Banerjee's "austere lifestyle appears closer to the old icons of the Bengal communist movement than their successors who had become corrupted by three decades of power."

Pradip Bose said of the results reasons that: "How could a communist government ask the police to fire on peasants as they did in Nandigram to set up a chemical industry.

Economist Bibek Debroy said that "The Communists were functioning within the parameters of Indian democracy but they tried to create a party whereby they could control all segments of Bengali society.