Modi's party achieves historic breakthrough, conquering politically complex Bengal in elections
Kyiv • UNN
Narendra Modi's BJP has won in the state of West Bengal for the first time. This success strengthens Amit Shah's position as the likely successor to the current Prime Minister.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has secured one of the most significant breakthroughs in Modi's 12-year rule by conquering Bengal, one of India's toughest political frontiers, in the elections, BBC reports, according to UNN.
Details
For many years, the state of West Bengal in India has been an exception to Narendra Modi's path of political progress.
His BJP party has "captured" India's Hindi-speaking regions, expanded to the west and northeast, and "crushed" once-formidable regional rivals. However, Bengal—prone to controversy and convinced of its cultural exceptionalism—stubbornly resisted, the publication writes.
This made the state elections extremely important. With a population of over 100 million people, West Bengal's electorate is larger than Germany's, turning the election into something more than a typical Indian state election, the publication notes.
"The BJP's victory on Monday will go down as one of the most significant breakthroughs in Modi's 12-year rule. It is not just the defeat of a ruling politician who held office for three terms, but the completion of the party's long march into eastern India," the report says.
"Victory in Bengal is a major win for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — a promised land that has long eluded its reach," noted writer and journalist Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Nowhere did the results have such significant political weight as in Bengal, the publication observes.
In nearly half a century, the state has seen only one change of government: the Communist Left Front ruled for 34 years, after which the Trinamool Congress (TMC), led by the fiery populist Mamata Banerjee, dominated for the next 15 years. Political scientists have long described Bengal as a system that favors "hegemonic" parties.
Analysts view this result not as a sudden coup, but as the culmination of a decade-long political project. Unlike the BJP's rapid rise in Tripura or its early breakthrough in Assam, Bengal was never a lightning conquest, the publication writes.
"The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been one of the major forces in Bengal for three consecutive elections, consistently garnering around 39% of the vote," said Rahul Verma, a fellow at the Centre for Policy Research.
According to him, once the party approached the 39-40% mark, "it really only needed 5-6% to cross that threshold." Voting trends show that this time the BJP received over 44% of the vote.
What is particularly striking is that the BJP achieved this despite lacking the deep organizational structure that regional parties have historically needed to win in Bengal.
The breakthrough in Bengal could change the BJP's succession politics, says Mukhopadhyay.
It would strengthen the position of Home Minister Amit Shah, who effectively managed the campaign, as Modi's most likely successor, potentially placing him ahead of rivals in the party's next-generation power hierarchy, the publication writes.
This would make the Bengal verdict important far beyond the state itself.
For decades, Bengal prided itself on resisting the political currents that transformed the rest of India.
Now that the BJP has finally breached one of India's strongest regional strongholds, it could signal not only the end of an era in Bengal but also the beginning of a new phase in the Modi project itself, the publication notes.