The Congress cancelled a press conference scheduled for Monday evening, with leaders such as Rahul Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge and Jairam Ramesh choosing to take to social media to thank the people of Kerala for its victory in the state, while admitting disappointment over the election results elsewhere.
The posts on X summed up the day for the Opposition, with the Congress’s return in Kerala barely offsetting the loss of three big names across three states – leaving the INDIA bloc staring down the barrel, struggling to navigate a political landscape characterized by intense voter polarisation even as its leaders battle a credibility crisis.
Mamata Banerjee and M K Stalin, two of the most vociferous Opposition voices, were toppled by the BJP and Vijay’s TVK in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, respectively. While the victory in Kerala was a much-needed respite for the Congress, it was at the expense of another towering Opposition figure, Pinarayi Vijayan. The fact that it now has no counterweight within the INDIA bloc – a victorious Mamata would have again demanded that the Congress hand over the leadership mantle – may delight some Congress hearts. But they will be few and far between, with the Pyrrhic nature of this relief hard to ignore under the BJP’s yawning shadow.
The party conquered Bengal, its last frontier in the East, after Odisha in 2024, and didn’t just retain Assam, but also increased its seats in the state. The wins come on the heels of BJP victories in Maharashtra, Delhi, Haryana and Bihar over the past two years, and the party now has 17 Chief Ministers – resembling an era when the Congress had complete electoral hegemony – with absolute dominance just not in the East, but also the Hindi heartland in the North, and the West.
The non-BJP parties now rule just six states and the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. And three of these states – Karnataka, Telangana and Kerala – are in the South, confining the Congress, the main Opposition, as a force in only the region, in a way.
The states which are with the Opposition in the North now – Jharkhand, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh – apart from the UT of J&K, together account for barely 37 seats, or about 7% of the total, in the Lok Sabha. In Tamil Nadu and Bengal alone that it lost Monday, the Opposition held 69 of 81 Lok Sabha seats.
But the defeat of Mamata and Stalin goes beyond that, as they punched much above their weight in numbers at the Centre. Led by them, their parties took on the Modi government on issues ranging from federal infringement to fiscal autonomy, with Vijayan too weighing in on issues.
Their shrunken stature follows on the back of fading of other non-BJP regional satraps in recent years. If NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar and the Shiv Sena (UBT)’s Uddhav Thackeray have been battered by splits in their party, with the rival factions aligning with the BJP, the Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav, the RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav and Aam Aadmi Party’s Arvind Kejriwal are struggling after repeated electoral setbacks. This leaves the Opposition with very few credible faces who can rally parties and articulate the Opposition voice. Naveen Patnaik of the BJD, who could have been one such voice, has proved time and again that he is more comfortable sitting on the fence.
Nitish Kumar of the JD(U), meanwhile, is well and truly ensconced in the NDA camp now.
The Opposition seems to be struggling even on issues to frame its narrative around. The ones it has variously latched on to – from the contentious Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls to the fear of infringement of federal principles, to a pushback against BJP-style nationalism, to “misuse” of Central agencies by the Modi government – don’t seem to be resonating on the ground.
In fact, having reduced the BJP to 240 seats in the Lok Sabha, largely on account of fears that a dominant Centre would tinker with the Constitution – which the Opposition identified and amplified – the latter has struggled to come up with a message that is as potent.
The Congress could still look at Kerala for a silver lining, but the slide of the Left, which has been the Congress’s ideological journeyman lately, continues. With the loss in Kerala, the Left does not have a single CM in India for the first time since 1977.
The next worry for the Opposition is not too far away, with two of the states ruled by it, Punjab and Himachal, going to polls next year. The AAP will struggle to hold on in Punjab after repeated battering, the latest just last week, with seven of its Rajya Sabha MPs – six of them from Punjab – deserting the AAP and merging with the BJP. In Himachal, the Congress government has been struggling against depleted finances and an administration seen as floundering.
The other five states which go to polls next year – Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Gujarat, Manipur and Uttarakhand – are anyway with the BJP now.
Another problem the INDIA bloc faces are the strains within, which the electoral losses will exacerbate.
The Congress national leadership has been partial towards Vijay, and if the party decides to lend the TVK support (Vijay may finish short of a majority), the Congress’s alliance with the DMK will suffer a rupture. Their relationship has been showing friction for a while now, with Rahul Gandhi and Stalin, once quite warm towards each other, not sharing the stage. It is well-known that Gandhi had been open to exploring a seat-sharing pact with Vijay, but that Congress president Kharge and the Tamil Nadu leadership had joined hands to stall it.
Notably, in his post-result messages on Monday, Gandhi congratulated Vijay for his Tamil Nadu victory while saying that the mandate to him “reflects the rising voice of youth”, and made no mention of Stalin.
In a separate post on X, he said he agreed with Mamata that “more than 100 seats were stolen in Bengal” and said the results in the state and in Assam were “clear cases of the election being stolen by the BJP with the support of the EC (Election Commission)”.
However, this solidarity with Mamata comes after a bitter campaign during which Gandhi attacked the TMC chief personally, raising the R G Kar Hospital rape and murder, as well as corruption cases. The TMC has always bristled at accepting the Congress as the big partner, and while a defeat may leave it chastened, the Mamata-led party won’t forget Gandhi’s criticisms in a hurry.
As for other INDIA bloc partners, the signs for the Congress are not good. The RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav, the JMM’s Hemant Soren (both allies of the Congress) and the AAP’s Kejriwal rallied behind Mamata in Bengal, and joined the TMC’s campaign trail, while Tejashwi and Kejriwal campaigned alongside Stalin in Tamil Nadu.
Akhilesh, whose party had allied with the Congress in the Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh, also extended support to the TMC on social media.
Mamata Banerjee and M K Stalin, two of the most vociferous Opposition voices, were toppled by the BJP and Vijay’s TVK in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, respectively. 
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