Modi’s poll gains in state elections point to push on India's civil law reform

NEW DELHI — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party on Monday gained substantial victories in state elections, an outcome that could accelerate its landmark policies like uniform civil laws and infrastructure building, political leaders and analysts said. Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secured its first-ever election victory in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, expanding its support base across the country and bolstering his standing as the nation’s most popular leader. The BJP was also on course to retain power in the neighboring state of Assam. The BJP won 50 seats and was leading in 154 seats in vote counting for the state legislature, according to Election Commission data. The incumbent Mamata Banerjee’s All India Trinamool Congress won 21 seats and was ahead in 62. The results, which aren’t finalized yet, show Modi’s party on track for a two-thirds sweep in the 294-member assembly. The gains underline that Modi’s strategy of pushing economic development, giving generous handouts and appealing to the country’s Hindu majority has become a sure-fire winner, including in regions ‌long seen as opposition strongholds. The BJP had poured resources into the Bengal election and Modi and his chief lieutenant, Home Minister Amit Shah, together addressed more than 80 rallies and roadshows in the state during the campaign. The wins would give the party and its allies 22 of India’s 28 states and two of its three federally run territories with legislatures, a dominance unmatched since the 1960s. These victories follow the 2024 general election, in which the BJP lost its majority in parliament and formed the government in New Delhi with the help of ‌coalition allies. BJP lawmaker Praveen Khandelwal said the state wins would boost investor confidence through greater political stability, accelerate infrastructure expansion, and improve welfare delivery. They will also let the party push for policies that will replace religion-specific civil laws. “The Uniform Civil Code has long been part of the BJP’s ideological and policy agenda,” Khandelwal told Reuters. “With more BJP-ruled states, state-level initiatives toward UCC, like drafting committees, consultations, or partial legal harmonisation, become more likely.” Governments in West Bengal and the southern state of Tamil Nadu that were strongly opposed to the BJP are on their way out, a crushing blow to the anti-Modi alliance. “The inability of the opposition to mobilise and build a stable, ideologically driven base has been a major weakness,” said Neelanjan Sircar, associate professor at Ahmedabad University in the state of Gujarat. The ⁠opposition and some analysts say the BJP’s success reflects factors such as gerrymandering in Assam and revision of electoral rolls in Bengal, which left millions off the voters’ list, many of them Muslims. Opposition parties say a significant number of those excluded were their supporters. The Election Commission, however, has said the exercise followed established procedures aimed at removing duplicate, deceased, or relocated voters, among other categories. But analysts also said Modi’s charisma and his platform of economic growth twinned with a muscular pro-Hindu agenda were proving to be unbeatable. The BJP’s main campaign pledges in Bengal and Assam included deporting what it described as illegal Muslim migrants from Bangladesh. The BJP also ⁠promised handouts, including monthly assistance of 3,000 rupees for women and unemployed youth, in Bengal. Since the COVID pandemic in 2020, the Modi government has provided free food rations to more than 800 million of India’s 1.42 billion people, a programme analysts say has helped shore up support among poorer voters. “The party’s so-called ‘lost ground’ is a baseless argument built by the opposition,” said BJP spokesperson Nalin Kohli, referring to the 2024 general election result. “There is no challenge to either the BJP or the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.” Monday’s BJP victory in West Bengal 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. For years, the West Bengal state was a great exception to Modi’s political advance. His party had swept through India’s Hindi-speaking heartland, expanded into the west and north-east, and overwhelmed once-formidable regional rivals. Yet Bengal 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. “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 extraordinary political churn across India’s south as well. 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. The LDF forfeited three of their sitting seats to the BJP in the state, which has vehemently resisted the right-wing expansion for long. 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. 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.