Big sweeps and some questions that count

The election results from West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam, and Puducherry on the surface are a boost for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its style of electioneering – brash, in your face, communal, and broadly free of restrictions that would apply to other parties under the Election Commission of India (ECI)’s model code of conduct.

If Assam is seen as a predictable BJP victory and Tamil Nadu as a favourable BJP result—one where the strong anti-BJP voice of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) under M K Stalin has been reined in—West Bengal is the prize that would make the BJP stand out and the Opposition cry foul.

The state that has resisted the saffron advance for decades finally makes way for the BJP in a bitterly contested election against the incumbent Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress (TMC), but this is a result not without its concerns and complexities.

This is the first time that the BJP will take power in West Bengal. This clearly represents a tectonic shift in Bengal’s political landscape and will impact the nation’s politics. The state, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) for over 23 years and by the TMC for 15 years, now goes to the BJP.

But the West Bengal result raises important questions about the fairness and robustness of the election process itself, and to the extent that it may erode faith in the process, it brings other elections and results into doubt.

This strikes at the roots of the democratic form of government in ways all too obvious, but these worries will be easily brushed aside by the BJP in the first flush of victory. The party will be unwilling and unable to see the price this victory will exact on the nation, particularly if serious questions on the deletion of voters under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls are not answered.

At the time of writing this, the BJP’s leads and wins together were above 200 in the West Bengal Assembly of 294, while the TMC’s were in the mid-80s. The BJP’s vote share stood at 45.4% towards the evening, above TMC’s 40.85%, according to the ECI’s live data.

The numbers will change as more results come in. In the most recent election, the Lok Sabha polls of 2024, the BJP’s vote share was 38.73%, behind TMC’s 45.76%. In the two years between two key elections, the BJP in West Bengal has registered dramatic growth: its vote share trailed the TMC by 7.03 percentage points, and now it leads by 4.55 percentage points. If indications are that the SIR appears to stand as a plausible cause for the party’s dramatic emergence in West Bengal, there will be a lot of discomfort with the results, and a lot for the ECI to answer.

Expanding footprint

In Tamil Nadu, the result has delivered a surprising reversal for the DMK. The Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), founded by actor-turned-politician Vijay, is in the lead with over 100 seats, with the DMK coming in as the second largest party at 62. With counting still on at the time of writing this, it is not clear if Vijay’s party will secure the 118 seats required to form a government.

Yet, the emerging picture is of the TVK on its own or with support from other groups or alliances taking power in the state. This, too, represents a monumental shift in the politics of Tamil Nadu and of India. This is the first time in over 50 years that Tamil Nadu would have broken away from the politics of the DMK versus AIADMK that the state has witnessed every election.

It is too early to say what this means or how Vijay will play out as the Chief Minister, particularly in his relationship with the BJP. Vijay has opposed the BJP’s pet scheme of ‘one nation-one election’ and has in the past described the BJP as an ideological foe and the DMK as a political rival. Yet, the BJP may wish to have him on its side if only to stem criticism against the party and, in return, to have better relations with a state that has been a bold opponent of its politics.

In Kerala, the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) has come to power after a decade, with its tally crossing 100 in a House of 140. The BJP has won three Assembly seats for the first time, in some sense an achievement given the party’s poor electoral history in the state.

Much can be made of this slow enlarging of the BJP footprint in a state that has consistently resisted the BJP, but it also shows that determined campaigning with special efforts can turn the tide. This calls for an equally spirited, determined, and vigilant Opposition.

At the end of the day, this is a political battle that shows the BJP to be an unstoppable steamroller, now controlling power across the North, the West, and the East.

The Opposition parties, which have been unable to come together with a cogent way to stand up and fight the political fight for the long haul, will have to once again think of the road ahead. It is clear that the BJP of today will stop at nothing in doing the deals it needs to take power: from breaking political parties and using the investigative agencies to raising the communal pitch in politics. If this must be challenged, the Opposition will have to set aside its differences, unite, and rebuild with principles and values long lost to Indian politics.

The writer is a journalist and faculty member at SPJIMR; Syndicate: The Billion Press.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)