A Political Earthquake in India

After underperforming in India’s most recent national election two years ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has made a roaring comeback. The BNP scored gains in last month’s elections held across five states and territories, even taking control of West Bengal, one of the country’s largest states, according to results announced Monday.

It was a badly needed victory after the BNP’s disappointing result in the 2024 general election, when it lost its majority in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament. Modi still won a third term but was forced to rely on coalition allies to govern for the first time since coming to power in 2014. As WPR’s Judah Grunstein wrote at the time, the result “put a dent in [Modi’s] aura of invincibility.”

But India’s opposition parties largely failed to capitalize on their momentum and carry it forward into this year’s state polls. The BJP, on the other hand, went back to basics and amped up its twin vote-getting strategy of welfare populism and unabashed Hindu majoritarianism, making up much of the ground it lost in 2024. Its victory “substantially increases the national standing of Modi’s leadership and extends the hegemonic power of the [BJP] to govern India,” Praveen Rai, a New Delhi-based political analyst, told Al Jazeera.