Thursday 28 / August / 2025
India’s ruling Hindu-nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has reasons to smile with its foray into the country’s north-east state of Assam.
Its victory at the head of an alliance comes at a time when questions were being asked about the electoral ability of its leadership. The humungous defeat of the BJP in the state assembly elections in the national capital Delhi and the politically crucial state of Bihar over the last two years had dented the reputation of invincibility of its leader Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the party chief Amit Shah.
The win in Assam on Thursday has managed to restore some credibility to the leadership, though more crucial challenges are around the corner, in the form of elections to the states of Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Punjab next year.
Sections of the media, known to revel in hyperbole, seem to have gone over the top in writing off the opposition Congress, and reading too much into the BJP’s success, including its one seat win in the Kerala assembly down south.
No doubt the BJP’s achievement is noteworthy as the party has breached the citadel of the Congress and the Left parties, but it is just one seat out of a total strength of 140. It needs to do a lot more to emerge as an alternative.
The Congress has suffered a setback in losing two states – Kerala and Assam. But that does not mean it is the end. The Congress has stumbled badly on a few occasions in the past but it somehow always manages to return in style. The party, which commanded enormous goodwill due to its role in India’s independence, is today a much-battered outfit with its leadership, Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi, in the throes of a serious credibility crisis.
But, similar situations have arisen in the past, when it was defeated for the first time in 1977 after the Emergency and, later, when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. The party, which managed a consolation win in tiny Puducherry, is too well entrenched to be wished away.
One formation in real crisis is the Left Front in Bengal. Its desperate attempt to rise like the phoenix in alliance with the Congress saw it defeated for the second time. Unbelievable, considering that the Left Front lorded over the state for over three decades, decimating all opposition at will. Its nemesis, Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress, has shown her win the first time was not happenstance. This time, she did even better than the last. Though the Left can feel consoled having won Kerala, it needs to quickly rework its strategies if it wants to survive in Bengal.
Tamil Nadu has, since 1967, followed an independent political trajectory in which none of the national political parties have had any role to play. The return to power of the Tamil-nationalist party, the AIADMK (All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) and its Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa has repercussions for its rivals within the state, but little consequence elsewhere.
- Exclusive to Times of Oman
- K S Dakshina Murthy is an Independent journalist based in Bangalore, India
