While the BJP has continued to be at the helm firmly at the Centre since 2014, several states have seen massive political changes and volatility in recent years – from major leadership changes to the rise of new parties.
Until recently or a few years ago, Naveen Patnaik in Odisha, Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan, Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Madhya Pradesh, Nitish Kumar in Bihar, M K Stalin in Tamil Nadu, and Pinarayi Vijayan in Kerala were virtually synonymous with their state politics. However, all that has changed in a short period of time, with new leaders occupying top posts in these states.
While in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and MP, the state leadership changed because the BJP decided to move its established leaders to other positions, or simply sidelined them, the changes in Odisha, Bengal and Tamil Nadu have resulted from electoral overhauls.
Behind shifting fortunes
Largely, there are two reasons for sudden changes in the political landscape of some states. One pertains to the internal politics of the BJP, where its dispensation has sought to replace old faces with new ones in states where the party sees itself as comfortably placed.
A BJP leader said, on condition of anonymity, that replacing leaders does two things: it keeps them on their toes, underlining that the party is bigger than any chief minister; and it also ensures that comfort zones and entrenchments are not carved out in the party. In other words, it ensures that regional satraps are not created, he said.
In Karnataka, it is the Congress that has recently done so by replacing Siddaramaiah as the CM, though the new CM D K Shivakumar is a formidable leader in his own right and has the potential to be the next regional satrap.
The other reason for such a change is political churn. Eastern and north-eastern India have moved towards the BJP due to various factors including the question of alleged illegal immigration. So major regional faces there like Mamata Banerjee in Bengal, Gaurav Gogoi in Assam, and Manik Sarkar in Tripura earlier, seem to have declined.
In Odisha, though, the change seemed to be largely driven by a fatigue factor towards the five-term Naveen Patnaik-led BJD government besides the row over the elevation of bureaucrat-turned-politician V K Pandian, seen as an outsider by many, by Patnaik.
In Bengal, the anti-incumbency against the three-term Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) government, and possibly the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, led to the BJP defeating the TMC. Mamata has lost not just the CM’s post and her own constituency, but also control over her party, with a majority of TMC MLAs rising in open rebellion.
In Assam, illegal immigration from Bangladesh had already been a raging issue, and the BJP aligning it with an old RSS concern has made the party the dominant force in the state for a decade now.
In Kerala, again, anti-incumbency hit the CPI(M)-led LDF hard, and the Congress, returning to power after a decade, elevated V D Satheesan to the CM’s post.
In Tamil Nadu, the anti-incumbency against M K Stalin’s DMK benefitted not the AIADMK, weakened after J Jayalalithaa’s death and in alliance with the BJP, but film superstar C Joseph Vijay’s fledgling TVK – mirroring the rise of M G Ramachandran from films to politics. Vijay’s stunning elevation as the new CM on his debut election has completely changed the political face of Tamil Nadu, even as its core Dravidian ideology is likely to remain intact.
Changing faces
Former Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje was replaced by first-time BJP MLA Bhajan Lal Sharma in 2023, and another BJP stalwart, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, was replaced in MP as the CM by Mohan Yadav. Given his stature and his efforts to endear himself to the BJP leadership, Chouhan was brought to the Centre.
In Chhattisgarh, former CM Raman Singh was made the Speaker and Vishnu Deo Sai became the CM. In Haryana, too, Manohar Lal Khattar, who was appointed a Union minister, was replaced by Nayab Singh Saini as the CM.
In Bihar, JD(U) president Nitish Kumar opted to quit the CM’s post months after a thumping NDA victory in the Assembly polls, and BJP leader Samrat Choudhary replaced him.
Odisha sprang a surprise in 2024, and chose the BJP over the BJD both in the Lok Sabha polls and the Assembly elections, ending Naveen Patnaik’s unbroken 24-year stint in power. The BJP installed Mohan Charan Majhi as Odisha CM.
In Bengal, the leadership change has been eye-grabbing, with Mamata Banerjee’s former aide and BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari defeating her in a direct contest for a second consecutive time. The TMC, which was in power since 2011, was reduced to 80 seats out of 294, and has now begun to implode.
It was more than a decade ago that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had begun to change the established political equations in Delhi, bringing Arvind Kejriwal to power, but the national capital sprang another surprise in the 2025 Assembly polls, when the BJP ousted the AAP from power. The BJP CM, Rekha Gupta, was also a greenhorn, and her elevation marked an unexpected change of face in Delhi politics.
Later, the AAP also took Punjab by surprise, sweeping the state in the 2022 Assembly polls. AAP leader Bhagwant Singh Mann rose to become a new regional face as the CM – a space that was occupied by Amarinder Singh, who was with the Congress till a few years ago.
The switch of Himanta Biswa Sarma from the Congress to the BJP several years ago also signalled a change, with the BJP taking Assam for the first time in the 2016 polls, and then staying in power till date. However, CM Sarma is an established face of regional politics, unlike some other recent CMs.
Apart from this pattern, the Congress’s decision to replace Siddaramaiah with D K Shivakumar as the CM in Karnataka has also changed the political face of the state. In Telangana, too, A Revanth Reddy was elevated to the CM’s post by the Congress in 2023 – who thus emerged as a new regional face.
Continuity, however, remains in Andhra Pradesh, where the CM and TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu has been a long-standing leader.
The continuity also remains in Uttar Pradesh, where senior BJP leader and two-term CM Yogi Adityanath is looking for a third term in the upcoming Assembly elections slated for early next year.
In Maharashtra, too, the BJP has continued to bet on its seasoned leader, Devendra Fadnavis, as the CM in view of the point that the party’s Mahayuti allies have strong leaders in the state – a situation that may have partially changed with the demise of Ajit Pawar in January this year.
BJP stalwart, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, was replaced in MP as the CM by Mohan Yadav. Given his stature and his efforts to endear himself to the BJP leadership, Chouhan was brought to the Centre.
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