The vitally important assembly elections held last month and the results announced on Monday, May 4, have succeeded in reshaping India’s regional politics as we know it. While the saffron tide in West Bengal led to a historic landslide victory for the Bharatiya Janata Party, Tamil Nadu threw its weight behind actor-turned-politician debutant Vijay, and the Congress-led United Democratic Front managed to defeat the Pinarayi Vijayan-led Left Democratic Front in Kerala. In the election, three chief ministers, all opposition and regional leaders not only lost their states but also lost their seats in the respective assemblies, Himanta Sarma of Assam and N. Rangasamy was an exception.
Here’s what the historic May 4 decision means for key leaders-
PM Modi
If there was even a dent Prime Minister Narendra ModiIn a series of profound political achievements, it was the Bharatiya Janata Party’s repeated failure to penetrate the ideologically and electorally decisive bastion of West Bengal. Even as the countdown to the elections began this spring, the state unit looked in disarray and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee seemed to be gaining the upper hand. His personal investment in the campaign – 20+ rallies, road show after road show in both Siliguri and Trinamool Congress stronghold Kolkata, and camera moments like eating Jhalmuri in Jhargram – paid off handsomely.
Any doubts about the longevity of the BJP’s political brand should now be thrown into the dustbin after the BJP’s somewhat disappointing performance in the 2024 elections; First Mumbai, then Patna and now Kolkata have indicated that a shock is more likely in 2024. The BJP has outperformed its performance in all the major states where assembly elections have been held. Under Modi’s leadership, the BJP revamped its electoral machinery after its poor performance and showed it could do coalition politics in a complex state like Bihar, and win on its own in the equally complex but more volatile state of Bengal. Monday’s victory (BJP won Assam and NDA also won in Puducherry) steadied his hand, ensuring that running a coalition government would not detract from his unique governance style. This makes him the first sitting Prime Minister since Jawaharlal Nehru to win West Bengal. This cements his stature as the country’s greatest political leader and someone who has taken on every major regional and Congress leader in the country and won.
He has not only expanded his party’s caste grip – taking it beyond its original comfort zone of upper castes to Dalits and backward castes – and also expanded it regionally. The BJP has its first chief minister not only in Bihar but now also in West Bengal, something unimaginable for Modi before he built an enduring national image that was not swayed by regional or gender concerns.
The party now has more MLAs across the country than ever before, which is a demonstration of its hegemonic position. The victory in India’s third-largest state in terms of political power means the National Democratic Alliance is now set to secure a two-thirds majority in the Rajya Sabha.
The historic victory in Bengal means Modi has fulfilled his promise to travel to the Ganga from Patna and win the state that has long been hostile to the political right. Now he is going through the same river to Uttar Pradesh where elections will be held next spring.
Amit Shah
Even on New Year’s Eve, a huge crowd of people is gathering Kolkata Park Street was flooded, Amit Shah We were having a quiet meeting in a hotel in Salt Lake. Top BJP officials and Suvendu Adhikari were present on this occasion. But his arch rival, former state unit chief Dilip Ghosh, was also invited – a man who had not only rebelled against the party but also met CM Mamata Banerjee. Taking charge of the 2026 campaign, Shah immediately put the factionalized state unit in order. He sensed that anti-incumbency was gaining momentum and spent a month in Kolkata to micromanage the campaign. Learning from 2021 missteps, he avoided defections, promoted local workers as candidates, ran a quiet campaign focusing on everyday durniti (corruption), and compared TMC governance to his vision of Sonar Bangla (Golden Bengal). For each key demographic, Shah laid out a different lure – for rural women, the promise of double the amount; Promise of jobs for rural man and end of migration; For the urban middle class, the promise of restoring the pride of Bengal and driving out the so-called Bangladeshis. It rejected TMC’s charge of being separated from the culture, language and food of Bengal. It took away TMC’s biggest strength – its dense grassroots network of workers controlling polling stations and constituencies – using 300,000 paramilitary forces. This especially helped in South Bengal where the BJP had no committed cadre. And the prolonged, particularly intense vetting added a communal charge to the election – allowing the BJP to place the question of undocumented immigrants at the core of the campaign, even if the exclusions did not affect the outcome. All this is the biggest milestone for the BJP since winning Uttar Pradesh in 2017. Shah must be smiling.
Rahul Gandhi
For a man repeatedly hurt by electoral failures, Rahul Gandhi One should be feeling relatively relieved. The Congress has achieved its most decisive victory in Kerala in a generation. The party now has four chief ministers on its own – three of whom are in South India. Moreover, the loss of MK Stalin and Mamata Banerjee may give Congress more space in the Indian camp.
Still, alarm bells are ringing. The Congress, which once ruled Assam, has now lost the state three times in a row. In Tamil Nadu, one of its oldest allies, the DMK, lost to a budding leader who had captured the imagination of the youth. With the party’s own seats falling short and any consolation alliance with Vijay – if at all – will not help in expanding its base. And in Bengal, the Congress may feel some relief from opening its account in the Assembly, but its relevance is limited.
Congress leader Gandhi had a mixed day. But it was a bad day for Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha. The opposition lost the election in a period where it was expected to perform well. The Indian faction will be cornered in the Rajya Sabha. Defeat in Tamil Nadu will deprive Gandhi of talking about federalism and diversity. After all, the BJP today rules a far more linguistically and regionally diverse territory than the Congress.
Mamata Banerjee
Mamata Banerjee No stranger to failures. In August 1990, the then Youth Congress leader was hit twice on the head during a protest against the then Left Front regime. The following year, he was again attacked by ruling party goons. And then in 2001, she was so confident of victory that she even showed the famous ‘V’ sign. The fight is equally tough for the seven-time MP, former Union Minister and three-time Chief Minister. Still, Banerjee faces the toughest test of her career.
The strong alliance he had built with Kalyan and his personal charisma has disintegrated. At the same time, communal anger, aspirations and demographic concerns among divided Muslims united Hindu voters behind the BJP.
Even the hinterland – long considered captive to both the softball of Kalyan and the hardball of TMC strongmen – moved away. Banerjee may claim that this election was hardly fair. The SIR disenfranchised 2.71 million. The Election Commission deployed 2,500 companies of paramilitary forces. Some of his candidates were raided by federal agencies, as well as his political consulting firm. And yet he got 41% votes. But they also have to accept that anti-incumbency wave was the major theme of this election. His national stature has diminished due to this defeat. At 71, India’s most successful regional politician is back on the streets. Can she make a comeback in the corridors of power? Time is not on his side.
mk stalin
Among the many descendants who have climbed the ladder of power, mk stalinThe climb should be counted among the longest. The son of DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi became the party’s youth wing secretary in 1982, MLA in 1989, Mayor of Chennai in 1996 and minister in 2006. Only in 2021 did he finally become the Chief Minister.
Finally, Stalin may regret promoting Udhayanidhi as minister in 2022 and deputy CM in 2024. The appointment of his 48-year-old actor son as his successor increased resentment against the DMK, scuttling the argument of being an ideologically driven party and emboldening critics. The DMK’s weakness against incumbency – it has never successfully defended a government in nearly 50 years – and corruption among lower-level leaders have exacerbated its generational problem, especially when it faced off against the more charismatic Vijay.
Stalin, once one of the most vocal advocates of federalism, would now find his national voice diminished. The DMK’s position within the Indian camp would be eroded, as would Tamil Nadu’s place in the larger scheme of the national opposition. Vijay’s victory would mean major restructuring within the Dravidian duopoly. DMK’s generational change may also be destabilizing.
Himanta Biswa Sarma
If there’s any cautionary tale for the dangers of dynastic politics, this should be it Himanta Biswa Sarma. Sarma, an aide of former Congress chief minister Tarun Gogoi, left the Congress in 2014 after realizing that his political guru was insisting on making his son Gaurav Gogoi his successor. Since then, Mama – as he is fondly known – has turned Assam into a North-East fortress for the BJP. Still, 2026 was far from decided. Congress had performed surprisingly well in the 2024 general elections. This was the first election that Sarma was facing as the public face of the party in the state. Facing a tough election, Sarma performed brilliantly. His administrative record, welfare efforts and anti-immigrant pitch helped the NDA score a century. BJP was ahead of the opposition in every field and Gogoi’s defeat from Jorhat would be personal satisfaction. Sarma is now one of the BJP’s tallest chief ministers with a rapidly rising national profile. Whether he moves out of Guwahati for the next phase of his political career will be keenly watched.
