India’s 2026 State Polls Power up the Modi Juggernaut, Reshape the Opposition

The 2026 state assembly elections have given a big shot in the arm to Prime Minister Narendra Modi midway into his third term.  

Not only did Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) win the eastern state of West Bengal, India’s fourth-largest in terms of parliamentary strength, with a massive mandate, but the elections also saw the fall of one of Modi’s key ideological opponents in the south. 

The defeats of West Bengal’s ruling party, the Trinamool Congress (TMC), and southern India’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), the ruling party of Tamil Nadu, significantly weakened the opposition bloc. The TMC and DMK were both ideological challengers to the BJP’s Hindu nationalist politics.  

U.S. President Donald Trump congratulated Modi for the BJP’s success in West Bengal. Noting the unusualness of this gesture, the Congress, India’s main opposition party, asked why assembly elections in an Indian state had become a matter for formal remarks from the White House. 

“What explains a White House spokesperson being specifically briefed on the outcome of a state election in India?” asked Syed Naseer Hussain, a Congress parliamentarian. 

Many political observers believe the state assembly results have the potential to accelerate centralization of power into the BJP’s hands, weaken the center-state balance in the federal structure, and corner regional identities in national discourse.

In 2024, the BJP fell short of a solo majority in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s Parliament. However, since then the BJP has gained much more strength through winning a series of state elections. That will ultimately increase their tally in the upper house of the parliament, where the BJP still lacks a majority. 

Four states (Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal) and one federally-administered Union Territory (Puducherry) held elections in April and early May. The BJP retained the northeastern state of Assam, defeating the Congress, India’s main opposition party. But their biggest gain was West Bengal, which was frequently referred to as a citadel of secular-liberal politics as opposed to the BJP’s Hindu nationalism. The win expands the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA)’s control to 20 of India’s 28 states. 

In West Bengal, the ruling party, Mamata Banerjee’s TMC, tried its best to invoke Bengali ethno-linguist identity issues and regional pride to take on the BJP’s Hindu nationalism. The election became widely controversial because of the deletion of about 9 million voters from the electoral roll during a special intensive revision conducted by the Election Commission of India (ECI). 

Of those 9 million, the deletion of 2.7 million voters for what the poll panel called “logical discrepancies” in their papers became the most controversial part of the election, as about two-thirds of them were Muslims, India’s largest minority group. Muslims make up 14 percent of India’s population but their share of the population in West Bengal is 27 percent, according to the last census conducted in 2011. 

While the supreme court of India allowed the poll panel to go ahead with the election without solving the disputes around these 2.7 million deletions, Banerjee’s party appealed to the voters to protest what she called a “targeted disenfranchisement drive. 

However, her party was also facing a tough anti-incumbency wave due to her 15-year-rule marred by controversies around corruption, lack of job opportunities, and politically patronized extortion rackets. In the end, the results showed a thumping victory for the BJP, which won 207 of the 294 seats. 

“The 2026 West Bengal Assembly Elections will be remembered forever. People’s power has prevailed and BJP’s politics of good governance has triumphed,” said a visibly enthused Modi.     

Banerjee rejected the results outright. She refused to resign and alleged large-scale irregularities. She claimed the poll panel “stole over 100 seats.” Her government was finally dissolved using constitutional methods, but her party is set to challenge the results in the supreme court.

In Tamil Nadu, one of India’s large states, the DMK suffered a surprise defeat, with Chief Minister M.K. Stalin losing his seat. While the BJP did not gain ground, the outcome has introduced a new conflict in the opposition bloc. The DMK and the Congress contested the 2024 elections in an alliance against the BJP and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), the DMK’s main rival in Tamil Nadu. 

However, a third force barely two years old broke the state’s traditional DMK-AIADMK binary. Actor-turned-politician Chandrasekaran Joseph Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) capitalized on anti-incumbency and youth appeal while navigating the two identity politics – the Dravidian ethno-linguist identity of the DMK and the Hindu nationalism of the BJP. 

This led to a hung house. While the TVK emerged as the largest party, no side managed to reach a majority in the Tamil Nadu assembly. Responding to the TVK’s appeal for support, the Congress decided to back a TVK government to keep the BJP away from power. 

This irked the DMK, one of the Congress’ dependable allies for the past decade, which called the move as “opportunist.” Since the TVK brought about the DMK’s downfall, it’s difficult for the latter to digest Congress backing its rival in forming the government. 

In Tamil Nadu’s neighboring state of Kerala, a Congress-led alliance defeated the Left Democratic Front (LDF), eliminating the last major Left stronghold. 

Meanwhile, several opposition leaders backed Banerjee’s decision of not resigning, alleging that she was defeated unfairly using federal agencies and a biased poll panel. Even though the Congress state unit challenged the TMC in the Bengal elections, the party’s national leader, Rahul Gandhi, said he agrees with Banerjee’s charge that more than 100 seats were “stolen” in the Bengal election. 

“Assam and Bengal are clear cases of the election being stolen by the BJP with the support of the EC [Election Comission],” alleged Gandhi, who is the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha. 

These “thefts” meant “a big step forward by the BJP in its mission to destroy Indian democracy,” he cautioned opposition bloc leaders, including those of his own party. Gandhi urged all to “put petty politics aside,” arguing that the election outcomes were not about one party or another, but a matter of national interest. 

Gandhi’s stance comes in the backdrop of the opposition parties’ repeated charges that the Election Commission has been acting at the BJP’s behest. His blanket support to Banerjee’s allegation shows his keenness to become the undisputed leader of the opposition bloc, argued one Congress parliamentarian who spoke on condition of anonymity. 

The BJP’s series of state election successes, however, exposed the limits of the opposition bloc’s federalism and democracy-focused campaigns. Voters often seem to prioritize other issues like welfare, service, employment, and identity, among others. 

Opposition parties have raised alarms over the misuse of federal investigating agencies against the BJP’s political opponents and withholding of funds for opposition-ruled states. There is a growing concern in the southern states over the impending redrawing of parliamentary constituency boundaries, potentially favoring populous northern states post-census. 

Nevertheless, the Modi model of combining Hindu majoritarianism and hypernationalism with welfare, aptly aided by the election management of his closest aide, Home Minister Amit Shah, trumped the opposition repeatedly. 

Many political scientists feel that the issues of democracy and federalism that Gandhi has been taking up are important, but the difficulty lies in convincing voters that these are bigger than the other issues.  

The results of both the West Bengal and Tamil Nadu elections show that people prioritized grassroots issues like economic stagnancy, corruption, misgovernance, and aspirations over broader issues like federal power balance or identity politics. In last year’s Bihar state election, too, the opposition’s focus on the charge of voting fraud failed to draw public support. 

“A new disconnect is emerging between the projected large issues and the micro politics linked to service delivery, opportunities, infrastructure and welfare,” said Ajay Gudavarthy, a political scientist at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).  

He said that the opposition parties are not able to connect with the masses, and they should focus on thinking through why they are failing to turn the macro issues into people’s issues. Gudavarthy also suspects that the BJP is consciously throwing up these macro issues as red herrings, while on the ground they are focusing on the micro issues.  

“Opposition parties must spell out very convincingly how macro issues are going to impact people’s concrete daily lives. There is no gain in blaming people for voting BJP,” Gudavarthy told The Diplomat. 

Congress’ performance in Kerala offers the party a platform for optimism, as it now controls much of the south, with governments in Kerala, Karnataka, and Telangana. 

Political scientists have noted that the opposition’s core structural problem is an inability to mount a unified, sustained national challenge to the BJP. Regional parties, especially the TMC and the north India-based Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), have been reluctant to accept the Congress’ leadership. 

Congress’ lack of electoral machinery and grassroots depth have been encouraging these regional forces to try and corner the Congress within the opposition bloc. This is why some politicians believe the weakening of the TMC, and the defeat of the AAP in Delhi last year, may also turn out to be a boon in the shape of a bane. 

“It may smoothen the Congress’ path for leadership of the opposition bloc, which can turn the 2029 election more direct between the BJP and the Congress than the previous ones,” said a senior Left politician, a former parliamentarian. 

Meanwhile, tension continued to build over government formation in Tamil Nadu. The results were out on May 4, but the governor — the center’s representative in states — had not allowed TVK chief Vijay to form the government, as his support stood five seats short of the majority mark. Opposition parties accused the governor of showing pro-BJP bias. Inviting the leader of the largest party to form the government and prove majority within a stipulated period has been the norm.

This wave of elections is over, but issues like federalism, electoral fraud, and reconfigurations in the opposition space will continue to dominate the national political discourse in the months to come.