1. A saffron sunrise in the East of India is on the horizon. An eastern corridor awaits the BJP. If it succeeds in installing a chief minister in West Bengal for the first time ever, it is capping its political control over the east of India. It has a chief minister in Bihar for the first time, and gained control over Odisha in 2024, another first. It anyway controls Assam again, as it does the rest of the Northeast – even if its new chief minister in Manipur rules over a very out-of-control state.2. The South was considered a big sunrise story for the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, but the BJP has been squeezed in both Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Kerala has flipped, as it has done every five years (except 2021), but the BJP has not got anywhere. Tamil Nadu too, with BJP having forced itself down the beleaguered AIADMK, has come up with nothing – if anything, it is coming in a distant third. Only Puducherry seems poised to return N. Rangaswamy: NDA yes, BJP, no.3. The Left is not in power in any state in India for the first time since 1977. The traditional third alternative in Indian politics, its absence will be felt on ideas articulated by it that held sway well above its electoral weight.4. The South votes differently? We saw this when TRS was voted out and the Congress won Telangana despite having run a “good government” and “schemes”. Do they have higher standards of well-run governments? After all, no party, except the AIADMK and the LDF, once each, has ever been re-elected to office.5. The ascent of cinestar Vijay as the Jana Nayakan, in the top spot, has blazed a trail like N.T. Rama Rao (NTR), who swept to power within months of forming a political party. Like NTR’s win from atop his Chaitanya Ratham signalled a fresh wave in the state but also proved to be fulcrum of the third front that dominated politics for the next few decades. Vijay has pushed Tamil Nadu’s politics beyond the DMK-AIADMK binary and is, like NTR, a complete political unknown. His ascent signals a new phase in Indian politics, one not confined to Tamil Nadu.amilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) chief Vijay during a visit to Saibaba Temple, at Shirdi in Ahilyanagar, Maharashtra, Wednesday, April 29, 2026. Photo: PTI.6. Institutional connivance with the BJP is a factor that has been most pronounced in this election. With the Election Commission biased in the matter of enforcing a SIR in Bengal, sanguine about an election with 27 lakh probable voters left out. The use of central forces in the state and the deployment of central officers alone took criticism about the Union of India using its power to weigh in against an opposition party. This trend is bound to intensify in the years to come.7. What happens with those who are outside the electoral list now? The so-called D-voters in Assam found themselves ‘in doubt’ in all manner of ways. What would be the recourse for those taken out of the rolls? Their employment prospects and livelihoods, and all their other rights?8. TMC and DMK – both of whom were once BJP supporters, but in the past decade and a half seen to be very crucial to the opposition flank – have been voted out of office. There would be a possible reconfiguring of the opposition space.9. DMK and TMC led from the front on the federal question. Where does the opposition drive and argument against the delimitation that the BJP definitely want in place before 2029 go from here?10. The push for dominating West Bengal, with 42 MPs, is not only for electoral reasons for the BJP. There is a strong ideological desire of the BJP to dominate the politics of border states or ‘partition states’. These states coincidentally, also have a demographic, Muslims in West Bengal and Sikhs in Punjab, which had never been thought of as hospitable for the BJP’s Hindutva-fronted politics. But the bid by BJP to be a factor in Punjab, where elections are due next year, will intensify. AAP has been hit with high-profile defections and Amit Shah’s pitch to the Dalit population in the state will see a push in the months to follow.11. Incidents of hate speech saw a sharp rise, especially in Assam. Three separate PILs flagging Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma’s repeated hate speeches targeting the state’s Muslims were taken up by the division bench of the Gauhati High Court on February 26. Eventually, with the Supreme Court first refusing to hear the plea and then decreeing them not hate speech, has normalised speech of a particular nature, that is known to have a polarising effect on the population.In West Bengal, top BJP leaders predominantly, appealed to the state’s Hindus overtly, with no checks exerted on them by the Election Commission. Suvendhu Adhikaru has “thanked” the ‘Sanatan vote’ and there has been talk of “Hindu” and “Muslim” EVMs. Scholar Thomas Blom Hansen’s The Law of Force: The Violent Heart of Indian Politics in 2021 had argued that attacks on Muslims and lower caste men and women go unpunished, if anything, have encouraged politiicans to use the language of anger, sharpening divides and yielding electoral fruit. The election strategy of the winners in West Bengal and Assam would likely provide a blueprint for future elections and not just to the BJP.All in all, we remain in the throes of the big churn in Indian politics, kicked off with BJP losing its majority in the Lok Sabha in June 2024, yet retaining power in the Centre. The struggle for control by the BJP, to punch above the strength of its numbers in the Lok Sabha, gets a lift with states rejecting regional bigwigs.INDIA, the coalition which the Congress remains central to, and the country, both will reconfigure in response.