The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)-led Opposition in Bihar was shocked when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies won 202 seats – an unbelievable tally – out of 243 on November 14, 2025, in Bihar, reducing the former to irrelevance.Tejashwi Yadav and his allies, Congress and the Left parties, were simply clueless about how they together ended up with barely 35 seats against 112 in 2025 and how the BJP and its allies took their tally to 202 from 122 – just adequate to form the government in Bihar. It was a magic of sorts!The sense of shock is almost the same for Mamata Banerjee’s All India Trinamool Congress in neighboring West Bengal. The embattled woman leader, her cadres, and even the neutral observers are stunned at how the TMC was reduced to 80 in 2026 from 215 in 2021 and how the BJP jumped to 207 from 77. It’s magic again!The Hindutva party’s spokespersons, aided by their cabals masquerading as anchors on ubiquitous TV channels, are cantankerously shrill, alleging that Mamata Banerjee, in the course of her three terms as the chief minister, had accumulated anti-incumbency, coupled with misgovernance, a bad law and order situation, and disenchantment against her rule among the voters. They are asking the TMC chief to “introspect” on what has gone wrong with her style of functioning rather than acting as a “law unto herself.”But the question arises: did Nitish Kumar, leading the Bihar government for three consecutive terms before 2025, face no anti-incumbency? Was the law and order situation so good under the National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA’s) rule in Bihar? Or did the NDA do something stupendously well from 2021 to 2025 that took its tally from 122 to 202 in five years? Were the voters so overwhelmed with the good deeds of the Nitish government in five years that they gave an unbelievable victory to the BJP-Janata Dal (United) (JD (U)) and so disenchanted with the Tejashwi Yadav-led opposition alliance that they reduced it to 35 from 112?Two states and two methodsWhile these questions might irk BJP cadres and supporters, the fact remains that the Indian State, which comprises the Election Commission of India (ECI), the investigating agencies, the larger bureaucracy, and more, is under the siege of the Hindutva machinery, which uses different methods to produce the same results for the BJP in different states.For example, there were reports of myriad irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar too. But apparently, the BJP, subtly supported by the JD (U) and other allies, used the SIR in Bihar to create an atmosphere against Muslims, with Union home minister Amit Shah spewing venom against “ghuspaithiyas” (infiltrators) from Bangladesh in the Seemanchal region, comprising Purnea, Kishanganj, Katihar, and Araria. The SIR, in its statistics, didn’t find the infiltrators, but the narrative around the “ghuspaithiyas” helped polarise Hindus against Muslims all over the state.The real trick was the direct cash transfer of Rs 10,000 each into the accounts of over 2.75 crore women ahead of polling in each of the five different phases in the state. In addition to that, there were cash doles worth crores of rupees in the name of clothes for lakhs of migrant workers who were transported in special trains from various states to return home for Diwali/Chhath festivals, which were timed with the polls. The Jan Suraj Party leader Prashant Kishore, whose party failed to open its account in the state, has gathered empirical statistics of the cash doles to voters, though the Election Commission found no fault with the “bribing of voters” on such an unprecedented scale.But with Mamata Banerjee in power, the BJP couldn’t have bribed voters in West Bengal in the manner it did with its control over the exchequer in Bihar. With its full sway over the EC and manipulation of the bureaucracy tasked with the SIR process, it disenfranchised 2,70,00,00 voters and added six lakhs more in a dubiously opaque exercise of the SIR. The judiciary too didn’t come to the rescue of the deleted voters. These 3,100,000 deleted and added voters account for nearly 5% of West Bengal’s total voters. Incidentally, there is a margin of nearly 5% in the vote shares of the BJP and the TMC in Bengal.With vice-like control over democratic institutions, including the media, the Hindutva party succeeds in seamlessly changing the narratives in the polls. For instance, the NDA leaders cried hoarse against Lalu Prasad Yadav’s ‘Jungle Raaj’, ‘Vanshwad’ (promoting dynasty), and corruption all through the polls.However, the BJP leadership has now replaced Nitish Kumar with the son of former Bihar minister Shakuni Choudhary, Samrat Choudhary, an accused in the massacre of seven members of the Kushwaha community in the 1990s. Prashant Kishore furnished the ECI’s documents establishing how Samrat had filed two different affidavits with two different dates of birth with the ECI. The BJP leaders constantly mocked Tejashwi as a “ninth fail”. The school certificate that Samrat produced in court in the 1990s to prove himself a minor and procure bail on that ground showed him as 7th fail.But now, the narrative has changed in Bihar. The media is now highlighting Samrat Choudhary’s statements that “criminals have no place in Bihar” and how he would deal with anti-social elements with firm hands. Some are finding a virtue in his Kushwaha caste, arguing that his presence as CM would strengthen the Law-Kush (Kurmi-Koiri) consolidation in favour of the BJP.Having won Bengal, the BJP will, in all likelihood, change the narrative in Bengal too. Suvendu Adhikari, who was embroiled in corruption cases before switching over to the BJP from the TMC, if elected or nominated as West Bengal’s CM, might be painted as the leader who ‘liberated’ the state from the corruption and misgovernance of Mamata’s rule.The fault lines in the Opposition’s strategyBe it their organisational weakness, the lack of resolve and vision, or the desire to acquire power, the opposition somehow allows the BJP to “normalise” the latter’s blatantly wrong and constitutionally untenable actions. For example, the Hindutva leaders, of course aided by the pliant bureaucracy, police, and EC, consistently carried out hate campaigns against Muslims in Bengal.Uttar Pradesh chief minister Adityanath went to the extent of saying, “Bengal ko Kaba nahin banan-e dengein (I will not let Bengal become Kaba)”, denigrating Muslims’ holiest shrine. If a pliant ECI didn’t act against Adityanath, it was understandable. Adityanath’s statement at an election rally was patently violative of the Model Code of Conduct.But such statements helped the BJP consolidate Bengali Hindus against Muslims. After all, the statistics suggest that six to seven out of 10 Bengali Hindus have voted for BJP candidates in Bengal. What did Mamata’s party do at the ground level to sanitise voters against such indoctrination that radicalised Bengalis to vote for Hindutva at the cost of the much-vaunted Bengali identity and Bengali pride?Similarly, Nitish Kumar ignored an event in Patna in which the Union minister Ashwini Choubey stopped the audience from singing Mahatma Gandhi’s prayer song, “Ishwar-Allah Tero Naam, Sabko sanmati de Bhagwan”. His party supported the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in Parliament, which allowed immigrants of all faiths except Muslims to acquire citizenship of India. Nitish not only supported the CAA; he also dismissed Prashant Kishore and Pavan K. Verma from the JD (U) for opposing the CAA.The silence, or subtle and tactical support to the BJP on such issues that denote what India, as a democratic and secular nation, stands for, by the so-called secular parties has allowed the Hindutva cadres to normalise their undemocratic and blatantly unconstitutional actions over the years. The opposition has more challenges ahead.Nalin Verma is a journalist, author and educator.