What 2026 holds for the ruling alliance and an array of powerful regional parties like the DMK and the TMC which hold the upper hand in their lair may determine where the shifting dynamics settle
The year 2026 will be yet another busy poll year in India’s politically diverse democracy in which elections assume a larger-than-life dimension. If 2024, the year of the Lok Sabha polls, represented a sort of moral victory for the Opposition after reducing the Bharatiya Janata Party to a minority and forcing it to seek a wider alliance to rule on, 2025 was one in which the ruling party leading the NDA bounced back with a vengeance, winning Haryana, Maharashtra, Delhi and Bihar.
What 2026 holds for the ruling alliance and an array of powerful regional parties like the DMK and the TMC which hold the upper hand in their lair may determine where the shifting dynamics settle. After a year of saffron success besides having had its way in passing important legislation, the BJP may not face as much of a challenge as the regional parties would be up against as they must battle to retain power against a strong national poll player.
Having lost the gains of 2024, the Opposition appears in greater disarray than the BJP that has kept its NDA stitched together even as it has chosen a new and younger face in Nitin Nabin to lead the party apparatus. Of course, as incumbent, the BJP can expect to have to fight as tough a battle in Assam as it will face in West Bengal where the regional satrap Mamata Banerjee may prove difficult to shift despite a two-term anti-incumbency building up. Any split in the Muslim votes in Assam would, however, play in BJP’s favour.
The polls will also be held against the backdrop of a trimming of the rolls after the contentious Special Intensive Revision exercise that has been running like a juggernaut with the power of the law seemingly behind it. The methodology has shown itself to be weak while the process itself has picked up the reputation of being an exercise to exclude voters on the smallest grounds rather than an inclusive and genuine updating of the rolls.
Even so, the voters declared eligible make a huge electorate. Since no one can claim to know who the ones being left out were going to vote for, the updated poll rolls will still represent a bizarre kind of level playing field. The truth about SIR will never be known in a country with an opaque record of governance and very few bipartisan aims held for the nation thanks to bitterly polarised politics where the leaders of the two major alliances have such scant regard for one another.
Favoured by the arithmetic of a three-way contest that could emerge from the political debut of actor Vijay’s TVK, M.K. Stalin’s DMK will be a force to be reckoned with. With Kerala being the other major southern bastion that has viewed it as a north Indian party representing the will of mostly Hindi-speaking people, the BJP may still be struggling to make serious inroads. The battle in Kerala could turn out to be a straight slugfest between the ruling LDF and the UDF, whose leader Congress will be standing on its own feet, hoping the recent local body poll results are a portent.
With the record revealing that Puducherry, where the BJP’s stake is higher as it rules in alliance with the All-India NR Congress, has been prone to throwing up surprising results, a potential three-way contest with Vijay’s presence could be even more unpredictable. While Assam will be the only state where the national BJP and Congress face each other head-to-head, the 2026 round of polls may only have a marginal national impact. The round will be more a test of the power of regional parties and how their contribution to national Opposition unity could be shaped by the results of 2026.
