BJP Is Now the Strongest It Has Ever Been — Here's the Data | The Squirrels

BJP Is Now the Strongest It Has Ever Been — And 2024's Loss Is Why

Since losing its parliamentary majority in June 2024, BJP has won Haryana, Maharashtra, Delhi, Bihar, Assam, and now Bengal — six consecutive state victories, each in territory it had never held before. The opposition has won zero. This is the most dominant position any Indian party has held since the Congress of the early 1980s.

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BJP Is Now the Strongest It Has Ever Been. And It Happened Because 2024 Went Wrong.

This is not a headline designed to provoke. It is a statement of electoral fact — and one that would have seemed absurd two years ago.

In June 2024, the Bharatiya Janata Party lost its parliamentary majority. For the first time since 2014, Modi's party dropped below 272 on its own, winning 240 Lok Sabha seats. The INDIA alliance celebrated. Analysts wrote essays about the beginning of the end. Rahul Gandhi became Leader of the Opposition for the first time. The narrative was unanimous: BJP is weakening.

Eighteen months later, that narrative lies in ruins.

Here is what has happened since June 2024 — in sequence, with no editorialising, just results.

October 2024. Haryana. Every major exit poll predicted a Congress victory. This was supposed to be the state where anti-incumbency after 10 years of BJP rule would finally deliver a verdict. Instead, BJP won 48 out of 90 seats. Third consecutive term. Congress, which had won 5 of 10 Lok Sabha seats just months earlier in the same state, could not convert its momentum into an assembly win.

November 2024. Maharashtra. The Maha Vikas Aghadi — Congress, Shiv Sena (Uddhav), NCP (Sharad Pawar) — had swept the Lok Sabha elections in the state, winning 31 of 48 seats. Five months later, the Mahayuti alliance led by BJP won 235 of 288 assembly seats. The MVA could not even secure enough seats for a Leader of Opposition. That had not happened in Maharashtra in six decades.

February 2025. Delhi. BJP won 48 of 70 seats, returning to power in the national capital after 27 years. The Aam Aadmi Party — which had won 67 seats in 2015 and 62 in 2020 — was reduced to 22. Arvind Kejriwal lost his own constituency. The party that was built on an anti-corruption movement was dismantled by corruption charges.

November 2025. Bihar. The NDA won 202 of 243 seats. The Mahagathbandhan — led by Tejashwi Yadav's RJD — was reduced to 35. For the first time in Bihar's history, a BJP leader became Chief Minister when Samrat Chaudhary took over from Nitish Kumar. The party that had always been a junior partner in Bihar was now the senior one.

May 2026. Assam. Counting day today. BJP and allies are leading on 100-plus seats out of 126. Third consecutive term under Himanta Biswa Sarma. Congress is trailing at roughly 20 seats.

May 2026. West Bengal. Counting day today. BJP has crossed the majority mark of 148, leading on 168-plus seats. If this holds — and the trends are decisive, not marginal — this will be the first time BJP has ever won West Bengal. Mamata Banerjee, who defeated BJP in 2021 despite every exit poll predicting otherwise, appears to be losing her 15-year grip on the state.

Read that list again. Slowly.

Haryana was supposed to be anti-incumbency. Maharashtra was supposed to be MVA's revenge. Delhi was supposed to be AAP's fortress. Bihar was supposed to be Tejashwi's moment. Bengal was supposed to be Mamata's impregnable bastion.

Every single narrative broke. In the same direction.

What makes this moment different from 2019?

After the 2019 Lok Sabha election, BJP held 303 seats in Parliament — its highest ever. It controlled most major states. But here is the critical difference: the states BJP rules today include territories it had never won before.

BJP had never won Delhi in the assembly since 1998. It won in 2025.

BJP had never been the single largest party in Bihar. It is now.

BJP had never crossed the majority mark in Bengal. Ever. Not once. It is doing it today.

These are not states where BJP was defending existing territory. These are new conquests. The electoral map of India in May 2026 is different from anything the party has held at any previous point in its history — including at the peak of the 2019 cycle.

In 2019, BJP's dominance was built on Hindi-belt consolidation plus a handful of allies. In 2026, it spans from Delhi to Bengal, from Assam to Maharashtra, from Haryana to Bihar. The geographic spread is wider. The opposition it has defeated is more diverse. And the margins are not slim.

The opposition is now the weakest it has ever been.

Consider each major opposition force and where they stand today:

Congress won 99 Lok Sabha seats in 2024 — its best result in a decade. But it has failed to convert that into a single state government victory since. It lost Haryana. It was demolished in Maharashtra. It is irrelevant in Delhi. It was crushed in Bihar. It is trailing badly in Assam. It has no presence in Bengal.

AAP has been reduced from a national force to a party fighting for survival in Punjab — its only remaining government.

TMC, which was being discussed as a potential national opposition anchor after 2021, is losing Bengal today. If Mamata loses, she loses her only base. There is no TMC without Bengal.

RJD, which under Tejashwi was supposed to represent the next generation of opposition politics, was obliterated in Bihar. 202-35 is not a defeat. It is an extinction-level event.

No single opposition party has the territorial base, the leadership bench, or the momentum to challenge BJP nationally. The INDIA alliance exists on paper but has not won a major state election since its formation.

The paradox: 2024 made BJP stronger.

This is the part of the story that will be studied for years.

Losing the majority in 2024 forced BJP to do three things it might not have done otherwise.

First, it forced a reset of the electoral machinery. The organisational complacency that had crept in after two consecutive supermajorities was shaken out. State units were restructured. Campaign strategies were rethought. Candidate selection became more rigorous.

Second, it forced a recalibration of the welfare pitch. The Ladki Bahin scheme in Maharashtra, the direct benefit transfers that were sharpened across states — these were not accidents. They were strategic responses to the message voters had sent in 2024: governance matters as much as ideology.

Third, it forced BJP to take states seriously that it had previously treated as stretch goals. Bengal was always talked about but never truly invested in at the assembly level. After 2024, the calculus changed: if you cannot win 300 seats in Parliament, you must build from the states up.

The result is a party that is more formidable in May 2026 than it was in May 2019 — not because it has more MPs, but because it has a wider, deeper, more diversified base of power.

None of this means BJP is invincible. Electoral dominance in democracies is always temporary. Parties that win everything eventually face the weight of their own incumbency across too many states simultaneously. The very breadth of BJP's current power means it now owns the blame for every governance failure in every state it controls.

But that is a problem for the future.

Today, on May 4, 2026, the Bharatiya Janata Party holds a position in Indian politics that no party has held since the Congress of the early 1980s. It has defeated every major opposition force in the country — each on their own turf, each in their strongest moment.

The question is no longer whether BJP is dominant. The question is whether any opposition force can rebuild fast enough to make 2029 competitive.

As of this morning, the answer is not obvious.