The Bharatiya Janata Party had never governed West Bengal. In a state of more than 90 million people — one of India’s most politically consequential — that fact stood as a rare constraint on Narendra Modi’s otherwise relentless expansion. As of Monday, it no longer does.

Results from the West Bengal state assembly election show the BJP winning or leading in more than 200 of 294 seats, according to India’s Election Commission — a thumping majority that ends 15 years of rule by Mamata Banerjee’s All India Trinamool Congress. The BJP’s previous best in the state was 77 seats, in 2021.

The victory gives Modi’s party control of 20 of India’s 28 states and removes one of the last major obstacles to its political dominance. It also effectively buries the narrative that the BJP’s 2024 national election setback — when the party lost its outright parliamentary majority and was forced to rely on coalition allies — represented a turning point.

“Looking back at 2024, it now seems like that was a temporary setback to BJP,” said Rahul Verma, a fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in Delhi. “They are returned to their dominant position. With every successive defeat, there is much more pressure mounting on the opposition; while the BJP looks even more invincible.”

A fortress falls

West Bengal mattered far beyond its borders because of who was defending it. Banerjee, the state’s chief minister since 2011, had positioned herself as one of Modi’s most prominent national rivals — a regional leader who could plausibly unite opposition forces against the BJP. Her defeat strips the opposition of its most credible challenger and further fragments an already divided anti-BJP front.

Praveen Rai, a political analyst at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi, told Al Jazeera that the result would “decrease the political capital of all the parties opposed to Modi.” The BJP’s win, he said, “substantially increases the national standing of Modi’s leadership and extends the hegemonic power of the party to govern India.”

With West Bengal gone, the map of resistance is thinning. Southern India remains largely outside the BJP’s reach — in Kerala, the Congress-led opposition defeated the ruling communist government on Monday, and in Tamil Nadu, political newcomer and film star Joseph Vijay pulled off a shock victory with his two-year-old Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam party. But these are isolated wins by regional forces, not coordinated national opposition.

How the BJP won

Analysts point to several converging factors. Anti-incumbency after 15 years of TMC rule was the foundation — voters expressed frustration with corruption, economic deprivation, and what Verma called the party’s interference in everyday life. The BJP also ran a more disciplined campaign, shedding its previous reputation as a party of northern outsiders by emphasizing cultural affinity with Bengali traditions. When BJP leaders ate fish on camera and Modi visited a 300-year-old Kolkata temple known for offering non-vegetarian prasad, the message was deliberate: the party would not police Bengali plates.

Religious polarization was central. Suvendu Adhikari, the BJP’s leader in the state, credited “Hindu consolidation” for the victory. West Bengal is more than 27 percent Muslim, and the BJP’s campaign leaned heavily into the accusation that Banerjee’s TMC favored Muslim voters. Neelanjan Sircar, a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, said his pre-election research found urban men particularly polarized along religious lines.

Contested ground

The election was not without controversy. The Election Commission conducted a Special Intensive Revision of voter rolls before the polls. The Guardian reported that more than 2.7 million voters were removed; Al Jazeera placed the figure at over nine million. Opposition parties and rights activists alleged the revision disproportionately disenfranchised Muslim voters. Banerjee challenged the process before India’s Supreme Court, which declined to restore voting rights but directed the commission to publish a list of affected voters.

The federal government also deployed a record 2,400 companies of paramilitary troops for the election. The TMC argued the forces were meant to intimidate voters; the government said they were needed to prevent political violence.

Analysts including Verma and Sircar agreed that while the voter roll revision may have played a marginal role, it alone could not explain the scale of the BJP’s victory. The structural factors — anti-incumbency, organizational investment, and religious polarization — were decisive.

What comes next

The result puts Modi on stronger footing heading into the final stretch of his third term, with a potential fourth-term bid expected in 2029. For the opposition, the question is becoming existential: with each state absorbed into the BJP’s map, the space for building a credible national alternative contracts.

Banerjee, for her part, signaled she would not concede quietly. In a video statement to party workers, she accused central forces of oppressing the TMC and urged supporters to stay at counting stations until every ballot was tallied. “We will fight like the cubs of a tiger,” she said.

Sircar predicted more turbulence ahead. “We are definitely in for drama.”

Sources