May 18, 2026

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HISTORIC CONQUEST

TO celebrate the BJP's historic conquest of West Bengal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived at the party headquarters in Delhi on May 4 dressed in traditional Bengali attire--a dhuti-pan- jabi. Addressing the ecstatic party workers assembled before him, PM Modi spoke to them with the satisfaction of a leader who had waited nearly a decade for this moment. "From Gangotri to Gangasagar," he proclaimed, "the lotus has bloomed everywhere." Then, pausing over each state as though marking milestones in a long political journey, he traced the BJP's sweep across the Ganga's riverine course: Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and now, finally, West Bengal. The entire Gangetic heartland, he declared, was now in the BJP-NDA fold. Just a fortnight ago, a seamless coup had been executed in Bihar, which saw Samrat Chaudhary becoming the BJP's first-ever chief minister of the state after incumbent Nitish Kumar resigned following an elevation to the Rajya Sabha. Two years earlier, the party had ousted five-time chief minister Naveen Patnaik in Odisha and installed the first BJP chief minister in the state. But its biggest breakthrough has been Bengal this summer, where the BJP stunned everyone by winning 207 out of the 294 seats in the assembly, securing a vote share of 45.9 per cent and breaching the formidable citadel chief minister Mamata Banerjee and her party, the Trinamool Congress (TMC), had built over three consecutive terms. The TMC was reduced to 80 seats despite a 40.8 per cent vote share, with the remaining six seats going to other Opposition parties.The win in Bengal has helped the BJP complete what Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan called the Anga-Banga-Kalinga, or Bihar, Bengal and Odisha, rendered in the old Pauranic vocabulary. In Assam, the BJP, along with its National Democratic Alliance (NDA) partners, struck a creditable hat-trick, winning 102 out of the state's 126 seats. It also found small consolation in the South, where the NDA retained power in Puducherry.Bengal, though, is undoubtedly the biggest prize. For the BJP and its ideological fountainhead, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Bengal is the homeland of Syama Prasad Mookerjee, founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, progenitor of the BJP. For seven decades, the organisation he built contested every election in the state, with little success, but with the patience of a movement that treats history in longer arcs than electoral cycles. That Bengal

THE CONGRESS COMEBACK

A running joke among Malayalis during the election campaign in Kerala was that you couldn't walk a kilometre anywhere in the state without a giant flex of the `Great Leader'--the now-deposed chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan--peering down at you. In hindsight, perhaps not the best move for a party of the proletariat carrying the anti-incumbency baggage of a decade in power. At one of the post-victory press conferences, the Congress taunted that this personality cult and the "hubris" in the CPI(M) campaign slogan, `Mattaarundu LDF allaathe (If not the Left, who else?)' had done enough to convince voters that a change was needed. The results speak for themselves-- the Left Front is down to 35 seats from 99 in 2021, one of its worst defeats in over four decades, while the Congressled United Democratic Front (UDF) posted one of the highest tallies in recent Kerala political history, bagging 102 seats (46.5 per cent vote share) in the 140-member assembly. What changed? The return of the minority communities to the UDF and Congress this election, an 8.9 per cent swing in votes that has helped rout the Left even in its strongholds. The Congress has had one of its best showings in years, with 63 seats, followed by the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) with 22, and the Kerala Congress (Joseph faction) with seven. Minor allies and UDF-backed independents cornered another 10 seats."We worked as `Team UDF' in the past five years. And today, we made it," Leader of the Opposition in the outgoing assembly, V.D. Satheesan, tells india today. "When I said we'd win 100 plus seats, not many in my party believed me. But I was confident." The Congress leader says the party focused on four things--reconnecting with allies who had drifted away, drawing in sections who were disappointed with the Pinarayi government, boosting cadre morale after the 2021 assembly poll loss and exposing the Left Democratic Front government's failures.Indeed, Satheesan had worked tirelessly since 2021, when he was given the responsibility of Leader of the Opposition in the assembly. The weak party machinery, lack of funds for poll campaigns, factionalism in the state party organisation were handicaps, but what stood him in good stead was his staunchly secular credentials and refusal to back down from a fight, be it in the assembly against the Left Front, or outside it against caste/ religion-based political outfits. In fact, the secular stand helped him lance Pinarayi's soft Hindutva moves with Ezhava community leader Vellappally Natesan and Nair Service Society (NSS) supremo G. Sukumaran Nair. The Congress also backed the six CPI(M) rebels in the fray. Three of them won decisively.The massive victory, though, does not mean Satheesan has emerged as sole claimant for the CM's post. A three-way tussle is on right now, with a group led by former PCC chief K. Sudhakaran campaigning for AICC general secretary K.C. Venugopal, even as Satheesan loyalists want him rewarded. Former Leader of