The results of the 2026 state assembly elections have delivered a serious warning to India’s democratic and secular opposition, and especially to the Left. Across three key states, voters expressed discontent, fatigue, and the desire for change. The BJP demolished the TMC, came to power for the first time in West Bengal, increased its dominance in Assam, and maintained its NDA rule in Puducherry. The increasing ascendance of the BJP-RSS and their Hindutva onslaught is by far the most dangerous outcome of these elections.  

The CPI(M)-led LDF suffered an unexpected big defeat at the hands of the Congress-led UDF in Kerala after a decade of remarkable pro-people rule. Along with the LDF defeat this time, what is equally serious is that the BJP has won three assembly seats in Kerala for the first time. The BJP also won a Parliament seat in the last election for the first time. There is no doubt that deep introspection and radical corrective measures need to be taken by the Left.  

The BJP’s triumph in West Bengal signals a dangerous consolidation of the Hindutva appeal that threatens the pluralistic fabric of our republic. Despite going through the harrowing experience of Partition, Bengal had long stood as a bulwark against the saffron onslaught, because the RSS-BJP had been firmly kept out by the Left and its governments for 34 years.

Notoriously, it was the TMC in its rule which encouraged the BJP-RSS to enter Bengal, in order to counter the Left. Mamata Banerjee was herself a Union Minister in the BJP-led NDA central government from 1999-2001, and again in 2004. The collapse of the TMC in Bengal now is clearly a result of gross misrule, massive corruption, and crass authoritarianism.

Yet the BJP’s victory was not merely a rejection of TMC misrule; it was engineered through relentless communal mobilization; massive money, media, and muscle power; and central agencies that destroyed the sanctity of the voter lists themselves through the SIR exercise, in which over 27 lakh voters were disenfranchised, citing ‘logical discrepancy’! The Election Commission and even the Supreme Court lost their credibility on the SIR issue and became identified as servile and pliant tools of the BJP regime at the Centre. This is an extremely serious development which is turning elections into a farce, and throttling democracy itself.

But the Left also needs to introspect why it could not revive its strength in Bengal in the last 15 years. An important reason is, of course, the tremendous and continuing repression by the violent nexus of TMC goons and police. But decades of organizational decline of the Left also created a vacuum which the BJP successfully occupied through its aggressive communalism.

In Assam, the chief minister proved the adage that new converts to a cause are even more rabid than its original adherents. His condemnable communal appeals met with deafening silence from both the EC and the Courts. In Assam and in Bengal, the issue of so-called Bangladeshi ‘infiltrators’ was used to the hilt by the BJP to intensify communal polarisation.    

A political earthquake took place in Tamil Nadu, where the popular actor but political novice C Joseph Vijay’s TVK ended six decades of the Dravidian parties’ dominance and came to power with the support given by the Congress, Left, and VCK, to prevent the BJP and its Governor from fishing in troubled waters. The previous DMK-led state government, supported by the INDIA bloc, had performed quite well. The Tamil Nadu result needs deeper study.       

These election results are a reminder to the Left that political relevance must be earned again and again — through extensive and intensive economic, social, cultural, political, and ideological struggle, and renewed mass connection with the people. The social conditions that historically produced Left movements have not disappeared; they have, in fact, intensified. But social suffering alone does not automatically create progressive politics. Organization, imagination, credibility, and determination are indispensable.

Economic and social distress—massive inequality, rising prices, joblessness, agrarian distress, farm suicides, privatisation, social atrocities—has not yet been translated into unified and generalised resistance because the Right excels at diverting anger toward “internal enemies.”

That is precisely why these election results are a call to action. The fight for a sovereign, democratic, secular, federal, socialist, and egalitarian India must and will continue—with greater resolve, sharper analysis, and unbreakable solidarity with the toiling millions.

History favours the Left when it stands firmly with the people against imperialism, neo-fascism and neo-liberal plunder. The time to regroup and advance is now!