BJP breaks TMC back in West Bengal, bags Assam with record margin; Vijay’s TVK stars in TN blockbuster; UDF wins in Kerala; Mamata, Gaurav taste defeat
KOLKATA/GUWAHATI/CHENNAI, May 4: Extending its saffron brushstroke in north and east India, the BJP is set to form its first government in West Bengal with a landslide victory in the state polls, securing a massive 206 seats out of 293.
The saffron party is also set to retain Assam for a third term, while the latest electoral cycle also saw a spectacular debut in Tamil Nadu by actor-politician Vijay’s TVK with 107 wins out of 234 seats to emerge as the single-largest party, a wipeout of the Left as it tasted defeat in its last bastion of a Kerala, and a solitary win there for the Congress, which has been battling diminishing electoral returns.
Three incumbent chief ministers — Mamata Banerjee (West Bengal), M K Stalin (Tamil Nadu) and Pinarayi Vijayan (Kerala) — are on their way out, with Banerjee also losing the poll battle against BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari in the Bhabanipur Assembly seat in Kolkata by a marging of over 15,000 votes.
While Prime Minister Narendra Modi, clad in a traditional Bengali dhoti-kurta, hailed the BJP stellar showing in the West Bengal polls during a grand victory celebration at the party headquarters in New Delhi, both Banerjee and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi alleged that the mandate was stolen.
As votes were counted, the EC’s trends showed a landslide victory for the BJP with 206 wins, with the incumbent TMC left reeling at just 81. Re-polling has been ordered in one constituency in the state.
Meanwhile, outgoing West Bengal Chief Minister Banerjee alleged that the mandate in more than 100 seats was “looted”.
“We will bounce back,” the Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo said while walking out of the counting centre at the Bhabanipur constituency.
A visibly-distraught Banerjee told reporters that the BJP’s victory was “immoral”.
Banerjee found an ally in Gandhi, who too alleged that the mandate in Assam and West Bengal was “stolen”.
In a post on X, the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha said: “Assam and Bengal are clear cases of the election being stolen by the BJP with the support of the EC. We agree with Mamata ji. More than 100 seats were stolen in Bengal.” “We have seen this playbook before: Madhya Pradesh. Haryana. Maharashtra. Lok Sabha 2024 etc.,” he said.
“Chunav chori, sanstha chori — ab aur chara hi kya hai! (Election theft, institutional theft — what is the option now),” Gandhi added in Hindi.
More than 2.5 lakh personnel of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs), along with state police, were deployed, with the TMC and BJP engaging in a showdown outside several strongrooms where electronic voting machines (EVMs) were stored in the run-up to the counting.
In Assam, where the election was a hot-headed affair too, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma led the BJP to another straight victory, bagging 82 of the 126 seats, leaving the Congress far behind at 19. State Congress chief Gaurav Gogoi faced his first electoral defeat in Jorhat.
“Hat-Trick with a century!” a jubilant Sarma said in a post on X and thanked the people of Assam.
Assam Congress president Gaurav Gogoi accepted moral responsibility for his party’s drubbing in the assembly elections, but vowed to remain steadfast in the fight for the rights and dignity of the people.
The Congress registered its worst-ever performance in this northeastern state as the party’s tally was 19 in the 126-member House. The party had won 26 seats five years ago.
Gogoi himself lost from Jorhat to incumbent BJP MLA Hitendra Nath Goswami by over 23,000 votes.
“As the president of Assam Pradesh Congress, I accept the moral responsibility of this defeat. But in this fight of ideals, we will always remain steadfast and continue to fight for the rights and dignity of the people. I am ready to perform whatever responsibility is assigned to me by the top party leadership in the future,” he said in a post in Assamese on Facebook.
If West Bengal was one headline of Elections 2026, the other was superstar Vijay, who defied the odds and the taint of a stampede during his rally in Karur in September 2025, in which 41 people were killed. That was clearly in the past as his party broke the bipolar cycle of Dravidian politics in Tamil Nadu.
Congratulating Vijay, Gandhi said, “The mandate reflects the rising voice of the youth, which cannot and will not be ignored.”
The ruling DMK that had started the morning at the third position, ended at 60 and the AIADMK at 47.
The choice, it appeared, was clear. Joseph Vijay Chandrasekhar appeared set to join the pantheon of MGR and Jayalalithaa as celluloid stars who made it big in the political firmament.
With actor Vijay’s TVK emerging victorious in the April 23 Tamil Nadu Assembly polls, DMK President and Chief Minister MK Stalin on Monday said his party bowed and accepted the people’s verdict.
Stalin asserted that the DMK, which worked well as the ruling party, would from now on work well as the main opposition party.
Further, he said: “I was truthful to all sections of people; I acted as per conscience, worked beyond my capacity.” In a social media post, Stalin said that in his public life, he had seen lot of victories and defeats as well.
Kerala witnessed a sharp political reset as the state electors voted out the last Left government in the country, bringing back the Congress to the ruling saddle after a gap of 10 years, while the BJP broke through a long-standing electoral drought by winning three seats.
The Congress-led UDF swept aside a decade of Left rule under Pinarayi Vijayan with a decisive Assembly victory, with the national party adding the third southern state to be ruled by it, in its kitty. The party is in power in Karnataka and Telangana.
The UDF won 102 seats, while the CPI(M)-headed LDF netted 35 seats out of 140.
With the Kerala win in her party’s pocket, Congress general secretary and Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra thanked the people of the southern state for their overwhelming support.
“To all my brothers and sisters in Keralam, thank you for your faith and for your overwhelming support. The trust you have placed in us will be the UDF’s guiding force as we work hard towards building a better future for each one of you,” she said.
In Puducherry, the All India NR Congress had won 12 of the 30 seats. The DMK stood at five and the BJP at four. The TVK made its presence felt with two seats. (PTI)
