Modi’s Triumph in West Bengal Elections Puts Him Closer to an Opposition-Free India

When Narendra Modi first campaigned to lead the country, more than a decade ago, he raised the slogan of a “Congress-free India,” plotting the elimination of his only national opposition.

Congress, the founding party of independent India, has since withered. It has hardly recovered from 2014, when its seats in the national Parliament slumped from 206 to just 44 in one election. It lost its grip on state legislatures, too, and now controls only four states, to the 21 held by Mr. Modi’s governing alliance.

Its decline left regional parties across India as the most important counterweight to Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and its Hindu nationalist agenda. Their leaders ranged against him in the north, south, east and west. Two of the most charismatic and formidable were Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal since 2011, and M.K. Stalin, who presided over Tamil Nadu since 2021.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/05/world/asia/india-modi-congress-west-bengal-elections.html