The the results of the parliamentary elections in 2026 in Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry to highlight several factors influencing India’s direction as a secular, democratic, federal republic. In Assam and Puducherry, the BJP and its partners retained power, while in the other three states the incumbents were swept away by a strong tide of changed public opinion. In Assam, the BJP crossed the 64-seat mark for the first time on its own, winning 101 seats in the 126-member assembly with its partners. For the Congress, this is its worst ever performance – even lower than its result in 1985 in the wake of the Assam agitation. Regional units that were part of the Congress-led alliance, including the Raijor Dal and the Assam Jatiya Parishad, were defeated, while those within the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) – mainly the Asom Gana Parishad and the Bodoland People’s Front – managed to win a few seats, although they now have little influence given the BJP’s overwhelming majority. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has strengthened his position in the state through a combination of polarizing communal rhetoric and redistribution schemes. Congress leader Gaurav Gogoi lost his own seat.
In West Bengal, the BJP achieved a decisive victory through long-term planning, aided by the state’s political history, a tainted electoral process and the exhaustion of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) politics that had already run. Bengal was home to the Indian national movement and Hindutva ideas long before they spread elsewhere, and carries a strong sense of regional identity. The BJP, through years of careful organization, has converted the state’s threshold population to its totalizing nationalist narrative. After covering the regional politics of Maharashtra, Assam and Odisha, she targeted West Bengal with obsessive determination and won. The TMC is facing an existential threat, its founder-leader Mamata Banerjee is 71 and its cadre and voters are now vulnerable to pressure from the BJP. These elections were also the most tainted of Indian elections: some 27 million people were arbitrarily removed from the electoral rolls, and the Supreme Court of India found this serious attack on the foundations of democracy unhelpful. If this is a sign of things to come, this is cause for serious concern.
Published – May 5, 2026 0:20 AM IST
