By Moa Jamir
The trends and results emerging from the Assembly elections in four states and one Union Territory on May 4 point to one unmistakable reality: the Bharatiya Janata Party is steadily expanding its political footprint across India, with the latest momentum indicating deeper consolidation in the East.
As per trends and results available on the Election Commission of India website late in the evening, the BJP had crossed the majority mark in West Bengal and appeared on course to secure what would be its first-ever government in the state.
The significance of such a breakthrough cannot be overstated. It comes close on the heels of the party’s decisive success in Odisha in 2024, another regional stronghold where it dislodged the once-dominant Biju Janata Dal, a former NDA ally, to form its own government after sitting in opposition for three consecutive terms. In Bihar, the BJP has remained in government for over a decade, with the state witnessing its first BJP Chief Minister in April 2026. In Assam, the party is also on course for a third consecutive term in office.
Yet among these victories, West Bengal remains the most politically symbolic and hard-fought frontier. The journey has indeed been remarkable. While the party first tasted parliamentary success in Bengal in the 1998 Lok Sabha election, its Assembly presence remained non-existent until 2016, when it won just three seats. In 2021, it dramatically increased its tally to 77 seats in the 294-member Assembly and emerged as the principal opposition in one of India’s most politically consequential states.
The rest, as they say, is history.
However, behind this electoral surge, particularly in West Bengal, lies a combination of tactical planning, sustained organisational expansion, ideological messaging and other strategies, besides, catchy developmental planks. Incidentally, this rise has also coincided with the consolidation of the party’s power at the Union level.
Despite its eastern success, the BJP’s southern journey remains uneven. Outside Karnataka, its most successful southern laboratory, where the party has performed strongly in both Lok Sabha and Assembly elections and has produced multiple Chief Ministers, its electoral gains remain modest. In states such as Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, its legislative footprint remains comparatively limited, confined to single digits.
In the latest elections the party won three seats in Kerala and one in Tamil Nadu. However, in Tamil Nadu, the emergence of Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam seems to have significantly altered the electoral landscape, disrupting the traditional contest dominated by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the latter being a BJP ally.
Back home in Nagaland, the BJP also registered a by-election victory with Daochier I Imchen reclaiming the 28 Koridang Assembly Constituency, a seat vacated following his father’s demise.
With the latest victories, the BJP’s direct control over state governments is set to expand further to 17, while its coalition presence continues across five others, including Nagaland.
However, the party’s rise cannot be viewed in isolation from the broader political context. Several factors may have contributed to this trajectory, including the fragmentation of opposition votes, polarisation, and the resulting consolidation of majority votes of support across key constituencies. At the same time, electoral processes such as the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, which reportedly resulted in significant voter deletions in some constituencies, cannot be entirely discounted from political analysis.
The larger question now is whether the BJP, emboldened by its latest successes, will further raise the stakes in electoral frontiers where its presence remains limited, and enhance the replication of the same political and organisational playbook that has brought it success elsewhere. For now, however, the political pendulum appears to be swinging firmly in the BJP’s favour.
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