New Delhi: BJP won in West Bengal, Assam and Puducherry,  actor Vijay’s TVK won in Tamil Nadu and UDF in Kerala. The people of the five States which are completed counting of votes on Monday delivered a clear verdict of change in the State. Three of the four states have gone for a change in the most dramatic fashion.

In Kerala UDF won 100 seats by defeating LDF after ten years. West Bengal BJP won with a landslide victory by 206 assembly constituencies. Tamil Nadu saying goodbye to its five-decade’s worth of binary Dravidian policy and cheerfully rolling out the red carpet for a political novice oozing star power.

Mamatha Banerjee led TMC Government in West Bengal and MK Stalin’s DMK Government in Tamil Nadu collapsed in the elections by defeat of two in their constituencies by the opponents and Congress won in Kerala with 100 assembly seats. The newly formed actor Vijay’s TVK party won 107 seats in Tamil Nadu assembly out of 234 seats and emerged as a largest single party to form Government.

West Bengal 

The BJP won 206 assembly seats out of 293 seats declared by the Election Commission.  The TMC has won 80 seats less than half of its massive score of 215 seats in 2021. The votes of Falta where a re-poll took place on account of violence will be counted later this month.

The unexpected return of the Congress and the Left Front the former is ahead in two seats of Malda and the Left from two seats. The Congress had not been able to open account in 2021 and the CPM had won one seat.

CM Mamata Banerjee, who lost her Bhabanipur with a margin of over 15,000 votes to the BJP candidate Suvendu Adhikari. After her defeat she said that it was a case of loot, loot, loot. It is an immoral victory. More than 100 seats have been looted, she said, promising that the party will bounce back.

The other big role in this election was that of the Election Commission which had the twin jobs of Voter Roll Revision and conducting a violence free poll.

The voter list revisions had pared down the electoral rolls by 91 lakh the figure includes over 27 lakh voters following adjudication, whose appeals are pending in 19 tribunals. The number is more than 11.6 per cent of the electorate – and bigger than the Trinamool’s 10 per cent victory margin of 2021.

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu voters was expected to pivot on governance, welfare measures and Hindi imposition, pulled all stops to vote for Vijay. The TVK won 107 of the state’s 234 seats, where the majority mark is 118.

The Congress has won five seats, its ally DMK 59. The AIADMK is a distant third, winning only 47 seats.

With Vijay’s TVK falling short of majority mark, the Congress apparently is ready to jump into the breach. Reports say the party its aspirations for power sharing in the state rebuffed by ally DMK has sent out feelers to the TVK.

While he is potentially joining the lists of earlier actor-politicians like MG Ramachandran and J Jayalalithaa, who transformed their silver screen aura into votes and smoothly transitioned into governance, Vijay, who lacks a background of political apprenticeship of either, has been able to tap into the youth’s aspiration for a change from inherited politics and old faces and beginning with a clean slate.

The crushing blow to the DMK was capped by Chief Minister MK Stalin’s defeat from his bastion Kolathur by little known VS Babu of TVK. Babu, an ex-MLA, was earlier with the DMK and he beat Stalin by a margin of 8,795 votes. Stalin was defeated last in 1991 and he became the second sitting Chief Minister after Jayalalithaa to lose an election.

Accepting the verdict, Stalin said, we ran a Government for all people, including those who did not vote for us. I remained committed to every section and acted according to my conscience.

Kerala

Kerala, the country’s most literate state and the initiator of the revolving door mandate, has gone back to its default mode after a term of deviation. The state has brought in the Congress and shown the door to the Left-led LDF.

Vijayan won the Dharmadam constituency seat over his Congress candidate with a total of 85,614 votes. The UDF won 89 of Kerala’s 140 seats, where the majority mark stands at 71. Of these, the Congress won 63 seats. The LDF was a distant second with 35 seats, a huge drop from the 92 seats it won in 2021. The BJP has also expanded its niche, winning three seats in the State.

Much of the UDF victory is also seen as traction from the victory of Rahul Gandhi and later, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in the Lok Sabha by-elections after Rahul Gandhi gave up the Wayanad seat to retain Rae Bareli.

Rahul Gandhi in his X post said that, “Thank you to my brothers and sisters in Keralam for a truly decisive mandate”.

Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra also expressed her gratitude, saying, The trust you have placed in us will be the UDF’s guiding force as we work hard towards building a better future for each one of you.

The UDF victory also signals a generational shift in the State’s politics, as the Congress moves forward without stalwarts like K Karunakaran and Oommen Chandy. Leadership within the alliance is now centred around figures such as VD Satheesan, who has been a prominent voice against the LDF Government.

Assam

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma led the BJP to a third consecutive term in a vote that stands strongly for consolidation. The ruling alliance won 102 of the state’s 126 seats, vaulting comfortably over the majority mark of 64. The Congress could only scrape up 21 seats, a big drop from its 2021 score of 31. Badruddin Ajmal’s AIUDF could win only two seats, down from 16 in the last election.

Akhil Gogoi-led Raijor Dal, part of the opposition alliance, won two seats and the TMC bagged one.

The real test for the BJP was whether the party managed to achieve majority on its own in the State assembly. But this was a barrier the party crossed with ease. PCC Chief Gaurav Gogoi lost the Jorhat constituency to BJP’s Hitendra Nath Goswami by a margin of 23,182 votes, marking a symbolic end to the Gogoi family’s undisputed influence in Upper Assam.

Puducherry

In Puducherry too, the NDA won another term, with the BJP and ally All India NR Congress scooping up 18 seats – two more than their 2021 score of 16. Of these, the AINRC alone has won 12 seats. The BJP won four.

TVK won two assembly seats in Union Territory Puducherry.  Opposition DMK won five seats and the Congress one seat.

AINRC leader and Chief Minister N Rangasamy won from both the seats that he contested–Thattanchavady and Mangalam.

In Thattanchavady, his pocket borough seat, he beat rival E Vinayagam fro Neyam Makkal Kazhagam by 4,441 votes. In Managalam, he defeated DMK’s SS Rangan by 7,050 votes.