Regional parties retain their importance in national politics as Mamata Banerjee and Jayalalithaa score back-to-back victories, the BJP and the Left get a mixed bag, and the Congress fails to check its decline.
Three clear trends have marked the elections in India since 2014. The first is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the coalition that it leads, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), occupying centre stage in the national polity. The second is the sustained growth of regional political forces, challenging the dominance of the BJP-led NDA. The third is the growing marginalisation of India’s grand old party, the Congress, at the hands of the BJP and the regional parties.
In 2014, the BJP won the Lok Sabha election with a massive mandate. It followed up that triumph with Assembly election victories in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand. It also managed to get a share of power in Jammu and Kashmir by working out a post-election alliance with the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). But this runaway success story was decisively challenged the next year. In 2015, first the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi and later the Grand Alliance in Bihar—consisting of the Janata Dal (United), the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress—inflicted resounding defeats on the NDA.The verdict of the 2016 Assembly elections in Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry, showcased both these trends and the Congress’ decline.
In Assam, the BJP has come to power, the first time ever in a north-eastern State, albeit in alliance with local parties. The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) in Tamil Nadu and the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal retained power with massive mandates in an impressive display of the might of regional forces.
The Congress was routed in Assam and Kerala, the two States where it was in power before the elections. Its only consolation is the Union Territory of Puducherry, which it managed to wrest in alliance with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK).
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