Associate professor at Ahmedabad University, Neelanjan Sircar believes that the Tamil Nadu governor should have called upon Vijay to form a government even though he is six seats short of a majority, because he is by far the single largest party and no other party has made a claim to form the government. Sircar believes the governor was wrong in not calling upon Vijay to form the government.He also believes that the scale of the BJP victory in Bengal is explained by the SIR exercise and the deletions it entailed as well as the rumours it provoked about Muslims and how those worked to the BJP’s advantage.Those are two key issues fairly extensively covered in this interview with Sircar. The others that were discussed include what message the voters have sent out, how dominant has the BJP become, how much has the authority and influence of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah increased within the BJP, will the southern states remain outside the BJP’s grasp for long or is that unlikely, why is Congress unable to strategically challenge the BJP in the north, east and west and are people right in blaming Rahul Gandhi for lacking the qualities of an effective politician and a successful Leader of the Opposition.