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

The opposition has raised concerns over possible electoral manipulations, threats to the federal structure, and democratic balance. 

Supporters wearing scarves of the Bharatiya Janata Party take a selfie during a public rally ahead of the Assam assembly election in Guwahati, India, Mar. 28, 2026.

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........

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