New Delhi: Conducted under the shadow of the contentious special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls, the 2026 assembly elections has seen the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) trounce the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, storming the opposition citadel that had been out of its reach despite it forming three successive governments at the Union level.The victory in West Bengal on Monday (May 4) has cemented the BJP’s consolidation in the east, with the saffron party also securing a record third successive term in neighbouring Assam.While the party now effectively has India’s north, west and east under its control, it has once again failed to make effective gains in the south, with both Tamil Nadu and Kerala opting for change in government but remaining out of the BJP’s reach.The elections have also seen the ousting of two strong regional leaders. Along with Banerjee, the BJP’s other staunch regional opponent, M.K. Stalin, has been voted out of power, with actor-politician Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) emerging as the frontrunner in Tamil Nadu, and the saffron party’s ally in the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) relegated to the third spot.In Kerala, the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) has staged a comeback, with the state returning to its template of alternating between the two fronts, which has been its mainstay for decades, albeit with 2021 being an outlier when Pinarayi Vijayan’s Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M))-led Left Democratic Front returned to power for a record second consecutive time.Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his victory speech to BJP workers at the party headquarters on Monday evening said that the lotus now blooms from “Gangotri to Ganga Sagar” and focused on how the saffron party has for the first time won the mandate in West Bengal – but the party’s inability to make inroads in the south were largely glossed over.This has once again drawn attention to the BJP’s failure to consolidate in the south, despite effective gains in the rest of the country.SIR, anti-incumbency, communalism cocktail to breach BengalIn West Bengal, the Election Commission (EC)’s website on Monday night showed that the BJP had won 206 seats, rising from 77 in 2021. The Trinamool Congress (TMC) on the other hand, which had won 213 seats in 2021, was reduced to winning in 80 seats and leading in one seat.In terms of vote share, the 2026 results show the BJP with 45.85% against 38.1% in 2021. The TMC’s vote share on the other hand dropped to 40.8% in comparison to 47.9% in 2021.West Bengal had remained the BJP’s long-desired state, where it has worked over the last decade to emerge as the principal opposition, edging out the Left and the Congress despite 15 years of uninterrupted TMC rule.The 2026 election saw the BJP riding on the twin waves of anti-incumbency, and a contentious SIR exercise coupled with high-pitched communal rhetoric.It not only retained its strongholds of north Bengal but also won the TMC’s strongholds of south Bengal, including in the North and South 24 Parganas, as well as Kolkata.While the TMC government in the state was facing anti-incumbency after 15 years of being in power amid allegations of rampant corruption, lack of development and rising unemployment, it was the EC’s SIR exercise that altered the electoral map in the state.Unlike in other states, voters in West Bengal were required to not just map themselves to the 2002 electoral rolls, but had to battle a new category named the “logical discrepancy”, which were triggered by duplication and name-related mismatches that were amplified further by script conversion and rigid matching rules.The result has been that the electorate has shrunk by about 90 lakh names, and an alarming 27 lakh voters were left to wait for their fate to be decided by 19 judicial tribunals less than two weeks before polls, with even the Supreme Court refusing to grant interim relief to the unprecedented instance of disenfranchisement.The BJP led a communally charged polarisation campaign focused on weeding out alleged “infiltrators” through the SIR, and sent the Central Armed Police Forces, the National Investigation Agency, the Enforcement Directorate and the CBI to West Bengal in the midst of the election, in an instance of militarisation never seen before in the state.Modi however glossed over the conditions under which the elections were held in Bengal and instead called it “historic”, invoked Rabindranath Tagore to say that “a new chapter has begun in Bengal’s future” and that “it has become bhay-mukt [free of fear]” where people can hold their heads high and their minds without fear.Third term in Assam with eye on BengalIn neighbouring Assam, the BJP has also scripted history by winning a third straight term in the state.The EC’s website showed that the BJP won 82 seats, rising from 60 in 2021. Its vote share too increased from 33.21% in 2021 to 37.81%. In comparison, the Congress, which has been out of power in the state for a decade, was reduced to 19 seats in comparison to the 29 it won in 2021. Its vote share remained virtually the same, moving from 29.21% in 2021 to 29.84% in 2026.The BJP contested the elections in the state with its two regional allies – the Bodoland People’s Front, its partner in the Bodoland region, and the Asom Gana Parishad, while the Congress allied with regional parties – the Assam Jatiya Parishad and the Raijor Dal – along with the All Party Hill Leaders Conference and the CPI(M) and the CPI (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation.Like in West Bengal, in Assam too the BJP’s campaign relied on high-pitched communal rhetoric against the state’s Bengali-speaking Muslims, including making open calls for exclusion, invoking demographic changes in the border state, and promising to push out undocumented immigrants. It also focused on the delivery of welfare schemes under chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.Notably, while both West Bengal and Assam are border states, the SIR was only conducted in the former, along with poll-bound Kerala and Tamil Nadu. In Assam, the EC only conducted a ‘special revision’ of the electoral rolls.Sarma however in his post-poll victory interaction with the media on Monday evening made it clear where the BJP’s priorities lay in neighbouring West Bengal and underlined the state’s importance on border security, though Assam too shares a border with Bangladesh.“This victory in West Bengal is a victory for India. This is not just a BJP win. Due to border security concerns and demographic challenges, there were major issues related to security and stability. Irrespective of the work we do in Assam, the longest Indo-Bangladesh border is in Bengal. Mamata Banerjee did not give land for border fencing. This victory is a victory for the nation,” he said.With the victory in West Bengal, and the return of its government in Assam, the BJP has now consolidated eastern India. In 2024, the BJP formed its first state government in Odisha, trouncing the Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal that had enjoyed over two decades in power.The BJP now has governments spread across north, west and the east, a fact that Modi did not miss mentioning in his victory speech on Monday, without making any mention of the BJP being reduced to 240 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.“Today, there are BJP-NDA governments in more than 20 states of the country. Our mantra is, ‘Citizen is God’. We are engaged in serving the people, and therefore the people are placing more and more trust in the BJP. The people can clearly see: where there is the BJP, there is good governance; where there is the BJP, there is development. Look at the trend of the past two years,” he said.“In Haryana, the BJP government was formed for the third consecutive time, in Maharashtra there was a resounding victory for the BJP, in Delhi an unprecedented win was achieved, in Bihar we got an even bigger victory than before. This success has not just been in assembly elections but in local government elections as well.”South campaign lacked Bengal-like intensityDespite the BJP’s consolidation in the north, west and east, it is the south that has remained out of its reach. While the SIR was also conducted in opposition-ruled Kerala and Tamil Nadu that went to the polls with West Bengal, there was no ‘logical discrepancy’ or ‘under adjudication’ categories in these two states. However the SIR shrunk Tamil Nadu’s electorate by about 68 lakh names (10.6%) from 6.41 crore to 5.73 crore and in Kerala, the electorate went from having 2.78 crore voters to 2.71 crore voters.The BJP’s intensive campaign seen in West Bengal, including the top brass of the party leadership as well as the entire cabinet, was also largely missing in these two states. Home minister Amit Shah, who had announced that he would camp in Bengal for two weeks during the poll period, also made no such claims about these two southern states.While both Kerala and Tamil Nadu have opted for government changes on Monday, the BJP has failed to make significant progress in the states. It is not in government in any of the southern states, with its ally the Telugu Desam Party in power only in Andhra Pradesh.The Congress, already ruling Telangana and Karnataka, has now scripted a comeback in Kerala. Tamil Nadu too has put Vijay’s TVK at the forefront, relegating the BJP and its ally the AIADMK to the third spot at best.Tamil Nadu and Kerala out of reachIn Tamil Nadu, the TVK has won 107 seats in its political debut, voting out the Stalin-led Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) which has won 59 seats and is leading in another. While the AIADMK has won 47 seats, the BJP has only won a single seat.The BJP’s vote share has marginally increased to 2.98% from 2.62% in 2021 when it won four seats.Ahead of the elections, the BJP forged an alliance with the AIADMK – the two parties had broken off their alliance ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The AIADMK gave the saffron party 27 seats as it focused on restructuring its party.While the 2021 elections saw the BJP open its account in the state for the first time since 2001, when it had won the same number of seats in alliance with the DMK combine, the 2026 elections has seen a reversal again with the BJP winning only one seat.While it contested more seats in 2026, compared to the 20 in 2021, its vote share only increased marginally, raising questions about the saffron party’s growth trajectory in the state. While it had hoped that the AIADMK would be its vehicle to enter the state, the former too has been relegated to the third spot, with the TVK acting as the disruptor and altering the state’s electoral pattern of the last few decades, wherein it alternated between the two Dravidian parties.In Kerala, with the UDF staging a return in the state, the BJP won three seats but its vote share remained largely unchanged at 11.42%, as against 11.3% in 2021.The local body elections in the state saw the BJP wrestle the Thiruvananthapuram corporation. In the assembly election too the BJP’s influence remained largely confined to Thiruvananthapuram, with the saffron party winning two seats (Nemom and Kazhakoottam) here, with another, Chathannoor, in neighbouring Kollam.Chathannoor was held by the CPI for 15 years and the BJP marked a surprise victory in the constituency, but also saw prominent party leaders defeated, including Sobha Surendran, former state unit president K. Surendran as well as union minister George Kurian among others.