“NEW FACE”
Political analyst Sushila Ramaswamy said that the BJP’s victory in West Bengal would consolidate the party’s hold in eastern India.
“It’s a tremendous victory,” she told AFP.
“It also shows the electoral machinery of the BJP, how effective and how much detailing goes into their election campaign. And it establishes the BJP as the dominant party in the country.”
Modi, in his address to BJP members and supporters in Delhi, urged peace and calm across the election zone.
“Today, when the BJP has won, the talk should not be of ‘revenge’, but of ‘change’. Not of fear, but of the future”, he said.
In another major electoral shock, veteran politician MK Stalin, chief minister of the southern state of Tamil Nadu, lost his seat to an unheralded rival.
Stalin’s ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) came a distant second behind a debutant party floated by the actor-turned politician C Joseph Vijay.
Vijay, 51, one of India’s most bankable actors, launched his TVK party in 2024 on the plank of youth employment and good governance in Tamil Nadu, a key industrial hub with more than 80 million people.
Results showed that Stalin, 73, had lost in his Kolathur stronghold to TVK’s VS Babu.
“This result (in Tamil Nadu) shows that the youth want a new face. It is not just anti-incumbency,” political scientist Ramu Manivanan told AFP.
“Vijay, as an actor, has a large female fan base as a cinema star. All that has influenced the outcome,” Manivanan said.
In neighbouring Kerala, an alliance led by the Congress party defeated the Left Democratic Front after two consecutive terms, ending the last remaining Communist-led state government in India.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi thanked the people of Kerala for a “truly decisive mandate”.