BJP gains reshape India, but concerns over electoral fairness and voter roll revisions in West Bengal raise serious questions about democratic credibility
The election results from West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry on the surface are a boost for the BJP and its style of electioneering – brash, in your face, communal, and to top it, broadly free of restrictions that would apply to other parties under the election commission’s model code of conduct.
If Assam is seen as a predictable BJP victory and Tamil Nadu as a favourable BJP result in that a strong anti-BJP voice in the leadership of DMK under Stalin has been reined in, then 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, but this is a result not without its concerns, complexities and worries. This is the first time that the BJP will take power in West Bengal, which has not had a national party leading the State since Siddhartha Shankar Ray of the Congress left office as Chief Minister on 30 April 1977. This clearly represents a tectonic shift in the landscape of Bengal politics and will have its impact across the nation. The State that was led by the Communist Party of Indian (Marxist) for over 23 years and by the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) 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 every other election and the result it produces into doubt. This strikes at the roots of the democratic form of government in ways that are all too obvious, but these worries will be easily brushed aside by the BJP in the first flush of victory. With its workers busy distributing ladoos at street corners in Kolkata, the BJP will be unwilling and unable to see the price that its victory in West Bengal will exact on the nation, particularly if serious questions on the process are not answered and if numbers show that the decisive factor in this election was the alleged targeted deletion of voters under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls.
At the time of writing this, the BJP leads and wins together were above 200 in the West Bengal assembly of 294, while the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) was in the mid-80s. The BJP vote share stood at 45.4% towards the evening, up from AITC’s 40.85%, according to live data put up by the Election Commission. The numbers will change as more results come in. In the most recent last election, the Lok Sabha polls of 2024, the BJP vote share was 38.73%, behind AITC’s 45.76%. Thus, in two years, between two key elections, the BJP in West Bengal has delivered dramatic growth – it’s vote share trailed by 7.03 percentage points and now it leads by 4.55 percentage points over the AITC. In theory, this is possible for a variety of reasons, but West Bengal still may present some challenges with respect to the numbers. It is of course too early to do a full-fledged analysis based entirely on numbers and voting shares since not all results are in. Yet, if indications are that the SIR appears to stand as a plausible cause for the dramatic emergence of the BJP in West Bengal, then there will be a lot of discomfort with the results. If subsequently this is found to hold, the BJP victory will bring massive costs later in terms of paying the price for playing with the system. It will also leave a lot for the Election Commission to answer.
In Tamil Nadu, the result has delivered a surprising reversal for the DMK. The actor-turned-politician C Joseph Vijay-founded Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) is in the lead with over 100 seats, with DMK coming in as the second largest party at 62. With counting still on at this time of writing this, it is not clear if Vijay’s party will go past the half-way mark of 118required for form a government. Yet, the emerging picture is of 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 50 years that Tamil Nadu would have broken away from the politics of the DMK versus AIADMK that the State political arena has seen play out in 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 the politics of the BJP.
In Kerala, the Congress has come to power after a decade with 63 seats in a House of 140. The BJP has won three assembly seats for the first time, in some sense an achievement given that the party has generally drawn a blank across the State in the past and saw just one MLA in 2016 and one MP in 2024. Much can be made of this slow enlarging of the BJP footprint in a State that has 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, using the investigative agencies to increasing the communalisation of politics – on the view that the ends justify the means. If this has to be challenged, the Opposition will have to sink differences, come together and build with principles and values that have been lost to Indian politics for a long time now.
The Billion Press (The writer is a journalist and faculty member at SPJIMR)
