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Modi’s BJP conquers Bengal, one of India’s toughest political frontiers

Published

2 days ago

2026/05/4

Priyan

Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a road show in support of BJP candidates in Bengal [BBC]

For years, India’s West Bengal state was the great exception to Narendra Modi’s political advance.

His Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had swept through India’s Hindi-speaking heartland, expanded into the west and north-east, and overwhelmed once-formidable regional rivals. Yet Bengal – argumentative and steeped in a self-image of cultural exceptionalism – remained stubbornly resistant.

That made this state election unusually consequential. With more than 100 million people, West Bengal’s electorate is larger than Germany’s, turning its election into something closer to a nation choosing a government than a routine Indian state poll.

Monday’s BJP victory there would rank among the most significant breakthroughs of Modi’s 12-year reign. It is not merely the defeat of a three-term incumbent, but the completion of the party’s long march into eastern India.

“Winning Bengal is a big victory for the BJP – a land of promise that has long eluded its grasp,” says author and journalist Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.

Monday produced an extrodinary political churn across India’s south as well.

Hindustan Times via Getty Images Chief Minister and AITC candidate for Bhabanipur Assembly Constituency Mamata Banerjee visits and interacts with people on 2nd phase and final phase of West Bengal Legislative Assembly Election at Chakraberia area in Bhabanipur on April 29, 2026 in Kolkata, India. — *A defeat in Bengal would end Mamata Banerjee’s 15-year rule in the state [BBC]*

In Tamil Nadu, MK Stalin’s DMK government was swept aside by actor-turned-politician Vijay and his fledgling TVK party, marking the dramatic return of film-star politics to the state.

In Kerala, the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) defeated the Left Democratic Front (LDF) after two consecutive terms, ending the last remaining Communist-led state government in India. Only in Assam did the BJP buck the broader anti-incumbent tide and retain power, while the party and its allies also held on to the federal territory of Puducherry.

Yet nowhere were the results more politically significant than in Bengal.

The state has seen only one change of government in nearly half a century: the Communist Left Front ruled for 34 years before the Trinamool Congress (TMC), led by the firebrand populist Mamata Banerjee, dominated the next 15 years until now. Political scientists have long described Bengal as a system that favours “hegemonic” parties.

Analysts see the outcome not as a sudden upheaval but as the culmination of a decade-long political project. Unlike the BJP’s rapid rise in Tripura or its earlier breakthrough in Assam, Bengal was never a lightning conquest.

“The BJP has been a major force in Bengal for three successive elections, consistently polling around 39% of the popular vote,” says Rahul Verma, who is a fellow at the Centre for Policy Research.

Once it established itself near the 39-40% mark, he argues, “the party really needed only another 5-6% to cross the line”. Voting trends show the BJP mopping up more than 44% of the vote this time.

*Exit polls had predicted a tight contest between the BJP and Trinamool Congress[BBC]*

What makes the result particularly striking is that the BJP achieved this despite still lacking the kind of deep organisational machinery that regional parties historically required to win Bengal.

The Trinamool Congress retained a denser grassroots network and the charismatic dominance of Banerjee. Yet the BJP repeatedly sustained a commanding vote share despite allegations of rival political intimidation and the challenge of taking on one of India’s most entrenched regional parties.

“That suggests,” Verma says, “the party’s support now extends beyond the limits of its relatively thin organisational structure.”

So what shifted the election so sharply towards the BJP?

For years, Banerjee’s party forged a formidable social coalition: women, Muslims and large sections of the Hindu vote across both rural and urban Bengal.

Women, in particular, formed the backbone of the party’s welfare-driven politics. The Lokniti-CSDS post-poll survey in 2021 found the TMC’s support among women touching 50% – four percentage points higher than among men – reflecting the impact of years of female-focused welfare schemes and Banerjee’s efforts to expand women’s political representation.

This time, however, the BJP sought to directly challenge that advantage by promising larger cash transfers and expanded welfare benefits of its own.

*Home Minister Amit Shah spearheaded the BJP’s campaign in West Bengal [BBC]*

“Banerjee’s long electoral success rested on a delicate equilibrium between welfare and organisation. But the very organisation that sustained her for 15 years also became her Achilles’ heel,” says political scientist Bhanu Joshi.

“That balance broke down as the party machinery weakened and welfare politics appeared to reach its limits – voters began to see benefits as routine rather than transformative.

“The BJP’s opening was to translate this anti-TMC fatigue into a sharper language of Hindu consolidation. So this is not simply a story of welfare failing; it is a story of welfare and organisation no longer being strong enough to contain polarisation,” says Joshi.

The election also once again highlighted the centrality of Muslim voters to Bengal’s political arithmetic, even if the precise contours of voting patterns remain unclear.

Muslims make up roughly 27% of the population, and nearly a third of the state’s seats have substantial Muslim populations.

In 2021, the TMC swept 84 of 88 Muslim-dominated seats, reflecting a broad consolidation behind Banerjee. While early indications suggest the party retained significant Muslim support this time too, the BJP has increasingly sought to offset that advantage through wider Hindu consolidation and competing welfare promises.

*The BJP has made significant inroads into Kolkata and other urban regions [BBC]*

“The BJP combined an aggressive welfare pitch with sharper polarisation. It promised to double cash benefits, while visible communalisation consolidated sections of the Bengali Hindu vote behind the party,” says Maidul Islam, a political scientist at Kolkata’s Centre for Studies in Social Sciences.

BJP leaders, however, framed the result less as ideological consolidation than as a rejection of the Trinamool Congress itself.

The TMC created a “crisis of leadership for itself,” BJP leader Dharmendra Pradhan told one news network. He accused the party of “arrogance” and claimed that “voters, particularly women angered by atrocities and law-and-order failures, had decisively rejected the Trinamool Congress”.

The other elephant in the room was the fiercely contested revision of Bengal’s electoral rolls.

The Election Commission said the exercise, known as the special intensive revision, was intended to clean up voter lists by removing duplicate or ineligible names.

But with nearly three million voters still awaiting tribunal decisions before polling, Banerjee along with activists and civil society groups alleged that Bengal had effectively gone into the election after a “mass disenfranchisement exercise”. This, they said, had disproportionately affecting poor and minority voters, especially Muslims and migrant communities in border districts.

Analysts say the exercise is now likely to come under even sharper scrutiny in closely fought seats where victory margins are much narrower than the number of deleted voters. “The revision of polls will come into play [once the results are in],” politician and activist Yogendra Yadav told NDTV news network.

But the electoral-roll controversy alone cannot explain the scale of the BJP’s surge, many believe.

What also worked in the party’s favour was a tightly focused campaign centred on alleged corruption and governance failures within the Trinamool Congress, hammering scandals such as a trachers’ recruitment scam rather than relying primarily on personal attacks against Banerjee.

*BJP supporters celebrating the results of Bengal elections on Monday [BBC]*

With the BJP firmly on course for victory, the implications will extend far beyond Bengal.

Unlike in neighbouring Bihar, where the party governs through alliances, or even Odisha, where its 2024 breakthrough came against a weakened regional incumbent, a victory in Bengal would represent a standalone conquest of one of India’s most politically formidable states.

“It would strengthen Modi enormously,” says Mukhopadhyay.

“More than Odisha, this would be seen as a personal political victory not only for Narendra Modi, but also for Home Minister Amit Shah, who effectively ran the campaign.”

Within the BJP, Shah would almost certainly emerge as the informal ‘man of the match’ – echoing the way Modi elevated him after the party’s landmark victory in Uttar Pradesh in 2014.

A Bengal breakthrough could also reshape the BJP’s succession politics, says Mukhopadhyay.

It would reinforce Shah’s standing as Modi’s most likely heir, potentially placing him ahead of rivals such as Yogi Adityanath, Nitin Gadkari and Rajnath Singh in the party’s next-generation power hierarchy.

That would make Bengal’s verdict consequential far beyond the state itself.

For decades, Bengal prided itself on resisting the political currents reshaping the rest of India.

Now that the BJP has finally breached one of India’s most enduring regional strongholds, it may mark not just the end of an era in Bengal, but the beginning of a new phase in the Modi project itself.

***[BBC]***

Getty Images BJP flags in Kolkata Street — *A defeat in Bengal would end Mamata Banerjee’s 15-year rule in the state [BBC]*

In Tamil Nadu, MK Stalin’s DMK government was swept aside by actor-turned-politician Vijay and his fledgling TVK party, marking the dramatic return of film-star politics to the state.

In Kerala, the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) defeated the Left Democratic Front (LDF) after two consecutive terms, ending the last remaining Communist-led state government in India. Only in Assam did the BJP buck the broader anti-incumbent tide and retain power, while the party and its allies also held on to the federal territory of Puducherry.

Yet nowhere were the results more politically significant than in Bengal.

The state has seen only one change of government in nearly half a century: the Communist Left Front ruled for 34 years before the Trinamool Congress (TMC), led by the firebrand populist Mamata Banerjee, dominated the next 15 years until now. Political scientists have long described Bengal as a system that favours “hegemonic” parties.

Analysts see the outcome not as a sudden upheaval but as the culmination of a decade-long political project. Unlike the BJP’s rapid rise in Tripura or its earlier breakthrough in Assam, Bengal was never a lightning conquest.

“The BJP has been a major force in Bengal for three successive elections, consistently polling around 39% of the popular vote,” says Rahul Verma, who is a fellow at the Centre for Policy Research.

Once it established itself near the 39-40% mark, he argues, “the party really needed only another 5-6% to cross the line”. Voting trends show the BJP mopping up more than 44% of the vote this time.

*Exit polls had predicted a tight contest between the BJP and Trinamool Congress[BBC]*

What makes the result particularly striking is that the BJP achieved this despite still lacking the kind of deep organisational machinery that regional parties historically required to win Bengal.

The Trinamool Congress retained a denser grassroots network and the charismatic dominance of Banerjee. Yet the BJP repeatedly sustained a commanding vote share despite allegations of rival political intimidation and the challenge of taking on one of India’s most entrenched regional parties.

“That suggests,” Verma says, “the party’s support now extends beyond the limits of its relatively thin organisational structure.”

So what shifted the election so sharply towards the BJP?

For years, Banerjee’s party forged a formidable social coalition: women, Muslims and large sections of the Hindu vote across both rural and urban Bengal.

Women, in particular, formed the backbone of the party’s welfare-driven politics. The Lokniti-CSDS post-poll survey in 2021 found the TMC’s support among women touching 50% – four percentage points higher than among men – reflecting the impact of years of female-focused welfare schemes and Banerjee’s efforts to expand women’s political representation.

This time, however, the BJP sought to directly challenge that advantage by promising larger cash transfers and expanded welfare benefits of its own.

*Home Minister Amit Shah spearheaded the BJP’s campaign in West Bengal [BBC]*

“Banerjee’s long electoral success rested on a delicate equilibrium between welfare and organisation. But the very organisation that sustained her for 15 years also became her Achilles’ heel,” says political scientist Bhanu Joshi.

“That balance broke down as the party machinery weakened and welfare politics appeared to reach its limits – voters began to see benefits as routine rather than transformative.

“The BJP’s opening was to translate this anti-TMC fatigue into a sharper language of Hindu consolidation. So this is not simply a story of welfare failing; it is a story of welfare and organisation no longer being strong enough to contain polarisation,” says Joshi.

The election also once again highlighted the centrality of Muslim voters to Bengal’s political arithmetic, even if the precise contours of voting patterns remain unclear.

Muslims make up roughly 27% of the population, and nearly a third of the state’s seats have substantial Muslim populations.

In 2021, the TMC swept 84 of 88 Muslim-dominated seats, reflecting a broad consolidation behind Banerjee. While early indications suggest the party retained significant Muslim support this time too, the BJP has increasingly sought to offset that advantage through wider Hindu consolidation and competing welfare promises.

*The BJP has made significant inroads into Kolkata and other urban regions [BBC]*

“The BJP combined an aggressive welfare pitch with sharper polarisation. It promised to double cash benefits, while visible communalisation consolidated sections of the Bengali Hindu vote behind the party,” says Maidul Islam, a political scientist at Kolkata’s Centre for Studies in Social Sciences.

BJP leaders, however, framed the result less as ideological consolidation than as a rejection of the Trinamool Congress itself.

The TMC created a “crisis of leadership for itself,” BJP leader Dharmendra Pradhan told one news network. He accused the party of “arrogance” and claimed that “voters, particularly women angered by atrocities and law-and-order failures, had decisively rejected the Trinamool Congress”.

The other elephant in the room was the fiercely contested revision of Bengal’s electoral rolls.

The Election Commission said the exercise, known as the special intensive revision, was intended to clean up voter lists by removing duplicate or ineligible names.

But with nearly three million voters still awaiting tribunal decisions before polling, Banerjee along with activists and civil society groups alleged that Bengal had effectively gone into the election after a “mass disenfranchisement exercise”. This, they said, had disproportionately affecting poor and minority voters, especially Muslims and migrant communities in border districts.

Analysts say the exercise is now likely to come under even sharper scrutiny in closely fought seats where victory margins are much narrower than the number of deleted voters. “The revision of polls will come into play [once the results are in],” politician and activist Yogendra Yadav told NDTV news network.

But the electoral-roll controversy alone cannot explain the scale of the BJP’s surge, many believe.

What also worked in the party’s favour was a tightly focused campaign centred on alleged corruption and governance failures within the Trinamool Congress, hammering scandals such as a trachers’ recruitment scam rather than relying primarily on personal attacks against Banerjee.

*BJP supporters celebrating the results of Bengal elections on Monday [BBC]*

With the BJP firmly on course for victory, the implications will extend far beyond Bengal.

Unlike in neighbouring Bihar, where the party governs through alliances, or even Odisha, where its 2024 breakthrough came against a weakened regional incumbent, a victory in Bengal would represent a standalone conquest of one of India’s most politically formidable states.

“It would strengthen Modi enormously,” says Mukhopadhyay.

“More than Odisha, this would be seen as a personal political victory not only for Narendra Modi, but also for Home Minister Amit Shah, who effectively ran the campaign.”

Within the BJP, Shah would almost certainly emerge as the informal ‘man of the match’ – echoing the way Modi elevated him after the party’s landmark victory in Uttar Pradesh in 2014.

A Bengal breakthrough could also reshape the BJP’s succession politics, says Mukhopadhyay.

It would reinforce Shah’s standing as Modi’s most likely heir, potentially placing him ahead of rivals such as Yogi Adityanath, Nitin Gadkari and Rajnath Singh in the party’s next-generation power hierarchy.

That would make Bengal’s verdict consequential far beyond the state itself.

For decades, Bengal prided itself on resisting the political currents reshaping the rest of India.

Now that the BJP has finally breached one of India’s most enduring regional strongholds, it may mark not just the end of an era in Bengal, but the beginning of a new phase in the Modi project itself.

***[BBC]***

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Ahmedabad to host IPL 2026 final on May 31

Published

4 hours ago

2026/05/6

Priyan

The final will be held on May 31 [BCCI]

The schedule for the IPL 2026 playoffs has been announced, with matches set to be held in Dharamshala, New Chandigarh (Mullanpur) and Ahmedabad. The BCCI has stated that, owing to certain operational and logistical considerations, the Playoffs will be held across three venues “as a special case”.

Qualifier 1 will be played at the HPCA Stadium, in Dharamsala, between the top two ranked teams from the group stages of the points table. The winner will be ensured a direct place in the final.

The Eliminator will be held in New Chandigarh, where the third and fourth ranked teams will feature. The same venue will host Qualifier 2, which will feature the winner of the Eliminator and the loser of Qualifier 1.

The final will be held at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.[Cricbuzz]

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Man charged with attempted Trump assassination indicted for assaulting Secret Service officer

Published

7 hours ago

2026/05/6

Priyan

[pic BBC]

The California man who allegedly tried to assassinate President Donald Trump at a Washington gala has been indicted on a fourth charge of assaulting a US officer or employee with a deadly weapon.

The new charge comes in the wake of questions over whether a Secret Service officer – who was shot but not seriously wounded in the attack at the White House Correspondents Dinner on 25 April – was hit by crossfire from another officer.

US Attorney Jeanine Pirro signed off on the new indictment unsealed on Tuesday, which supersedes the previous charges.

Cole Tomas Allen, 31, appeared in court in Washington DC last week. He has not yet entered a plea.

According to court documents filed on Tuesday, a grand jury also indicted Allen on charges of attempting to assassinate the US president as well as two firearms offences – transportation of a firearm and ammunition in interstate commerce with intent to commit a felony, and using, carrying, brandishing and discharging a firearm during a crime.

Allen was previously charged on those counts last week via criminal complaint.

The suspect was carrying a semi-automatic handgun, a pump-action shotgun and three knives as he allegedly rushed through a security checkpoint one floor above the basement venue at the Washington Hilton hotel on 25 April, prosecutors have said.

After gunfire rang out, Trump, Vice-President JD Vance, cabinet members and other White House officials were rushed from the hotel ballroom as dinner attendees sheltered under tables.

The incident has sparked a White House security review.

The Torrance, California , man studied at the prestigious California Institute of Technology, and worshipped at the Pasadena United Reformed Church in the Los Angeles area.

Federal campaign finance records show he donated $25 to a Democratic Party political action committee in support of Kamala Harris for president in 2024.

He allegedly sent an email to his family shortly before the attack that said, “Administration officials… are targets, prioritised from highest-ranking to lowest”, according to court records.

“I would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary,” he allegedly added.

Allen, who remains in custody, could face life in prison if found guilty.

[BBC]

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Trump says US to pause operation to guide vessels through Strait of Hormuz

Published

7 hours ago

2026/05/6

Priyan

[file pic]

The US operation to guide stranded vessels through the Strait of Hormuz will be paused for a “short period of time”, President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday evening.

Trump said that “Project Freedom”, which began days earlier, would be halted by “mutual agreement” because “great progress” had been made toward a deal with Iran.

Iranian state media characterised it as a victory, saying the pause demonstrated that Trump “retreated” after “continued failures” to reopen the vital waterway for global shipping.

The US president’s announcement came as Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the initial US-Israeli offensive in Iran – Operation Epic Fury – was over after achieving its objectives.

In a post on social media, Trump said that he had made the decision “based on the request of Pakistan”, which has acted as an intermediary between the US and Iran. He added that the US blockade of Iranian ports would remain in place.

Trump’s announcement may surprise some. It undercuts a day’s worth of messaging from Rubio, defence secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Dan Caine – all of whom vowed that the operation would ensure freedom of navigation and commerce in the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf.

“We would prefer the path of peace. What the president [Donald Trump] would prefer is a deal,” Rubio told reporters on Tuesday.

What happens next is unclear. The administration had stressed that Project Freedom was a “separate and distinct” campaign from the blockade, which is meant to pressure Iran economically.

Project Freedom was meant to help restore the flow of oil from the region and the global economy’s eventual return to normalcy by guiding stranded ships out of the Gulf through the largely closed waterway. But if during the “pause”, global shipping firms and the insurance companies working with them are stymied by Iranian interference, it will be difficult for Trump to claim that objective has been achieved.

On the other hand, the administration may hope that freezing Project Freedom – which the Iranians strongly objected to – helps bring them to the negotiating table again.

Rubio’s comments earlier in the day came after a spate of attacks in the Strait of Hormuz raised fears the ceasefire between the US and Iran was in jeopardy.

Tehran did not commented on Rubio’s statement, but Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf earlier said: “We know well that the continuation of the status quo is intolerable for America, while we are just getting started.”

Ghalibaf, Iran’s top negotiator in last month’s talks with the US, said, “Shipping security and energy transit have been jeopardised by the US and its allies with the ceasefire violations and blockade. However, their evil acts will fail”.

Late on Tuesday the UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said a verified source had told it that a cargo vessel has been struck “by an unknown projectile” in the Strait of Hormuz. Further details were not immediately available.

Earlier in the day the UAE said its air defences were engaging missiles and drones from Iran for a second day in a row. On Monday it accused Iran of firing missiles and drones including a strike on an oil port in the emirate of Fujairah which is located outside the Strait of Hormuz, calling it a “dangerous escalation”.

Iran on Tuesday denied launching any attacks on the UAE, with a military spokesman saying that, “If such an action had been taken, we would have announced it firmly and clearly”.

Operation Epic Fury began on 28 February when the US and Israel launched a wave of air strikes on Iran. Tehran responded by blocking the crucial waterway through which 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas usually passes.

In early April, the US and Iran announced a ceasefire under which Iran ended its drone and missile strikes on Gulf countries including the UAE, but few vessels have been able to transit the strait since then. The US also imposed its own blockade on Iranian ports.

On Monday, the US said it had attacked seven Iranian fast boats in the strait while Iran said it had fired warning shots at a US vessel. Both sides denied the respective claims. Two commercial ships reported attacks and one said it had successfully exited the strait under a US military escort, as part of Donald Trump’s plan to unblock the strait.

Speaking at the White House, Rubio said that while Trump wanted a deal, “That is so far not the route that Iran has chosen” adding: “What that may lead to in the future is speculative.”

He said US and Israeli attacks on Iran had caused “generational destruction to their economy” and the country’s leaders should “check themselves before they wreck themselves in the direction that they’re going”.

Hegseth said the ceasefire with Iran was “not over”.

“Right now the ceasefire certainly holds, but we’re going to be watching very, very closely,” Hegseth said during a press conference on Tuesday.

Caine said that while Iran had attacked US forces 10 times since a ceasefire began, these attacks were “below the threshold” of resuming fighting “at this point”.

Trump was later asked by reporters what would constitute a breach of the ceasefire by Iran. “You’ll find out because I’ll let you know,” he responded. He also said he believed a negotiated settlement with Iran to end the conflict was still possible.

The various comments from American officials suggest that the US has little desire or appetite to return to full-scale operations – further disturbing markets, sending prices skyrocketing and meeting opposition from large swathes of Americans.

Trump also has said he is discussing the strait’s reopening with Japan and expects to have a positive conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping about it when he visits China next week.