From star power to stunning victories, India’s regional elections deliver electrifying outcomes

HYDERABAD - India's key regional elections have produced stunning results in the states of Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, electrifying its national politics.

The most unexpected result came from Tamil Nadu, where C. Joseph Vijay, aged 51, unfancied as a political contender but popular as a movie icon, led his newly-formed Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) to victory against the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK).

Commonly known as Vijay or Thalapathy (meaning leader), he was not seen as a major political threat either to the DMK or the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), the two parties that have ruled Tamil Nadu for more than six decades.

The TVK has secured 108 seats in the 234-member assembly, followed by 59 for the DMK and 47 won by AIADMK, with the rest going to other parties, according to seat tallies on the Election Commission's website on Tuesday morning.

Vijay is poised to lead the state as chief minister, even though the party, launched in 2024, has fallen short of the 118 seats required to form a majority government on its own.

DMK leader and outgoing chief minister M.K. Stalin lost his own seat of Kolathur, which he had won three times since 2011, to the TVK's V.S. Babu by a margin of 8,795 votes.

Stalin in his post-result reaction said he has seen victories as well as defeats in his public life but the DMK's political journey will continue and it will act as a good opposition party.

Outgoing deputy chief minister Udhayanidhi Stalin emerged victorious in the Chepauk-Thiruvallikeni constituency.

Tamil Nadu is no stranger to creating big politicians out of film stars.

The AIADMK was started by famous actor-turned-politician M.G. Ramachandran, popularly known as MGR, after breaking away from the DMK in 1972.

He later served as the state's chief minister. J. Jayalalithaa, hailed as "Puratchi Thalaivi" (revolutionary leader) and popularly known as Amma, took over the party upon MGR's death in 1987, and dominated Tamil Nadu's politics for three decades during which she served as chief minister six times.

The AIADMK has considerably weakened since Jayalalithaa's death in 2016 at the age of 68.

Now Vijay is being hailed as a new political icon in the state whose more than 80 million people have a strong sense of regional and linguistic identity.

The assembly elections were held in the states of Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and the federally-administered territory of Puducherry last month and votes were counted on Monday.

In the state of West Bengal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) achieved a landslide win against three-term chief minister Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress (TMC).

Winning in the state bordering Bangladesh would enable the Hindu nationalist party to burnish its image as a party of broader national appeal rather than an organisation with its core strength in the Hindi-speaking region and western states like Gujarat and Maharashtra.

The BJP had pulled out all the stops to snatch West Bengal state from the TMC and the occasion was celebrated by its supporters across states.

West Bengal, India's fourth most populous state with a population of more than 100 million, witnessed a particularly fierce election campaign.

Banerjee, a strong critic of BJP policies, lost her assembly seat of Bhabanipur to BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari by about 15,000 votes.

Indian Home Minister Amit Shah, who spent many days in the state campaigning for the BJP, reacted to Banerjee's defeat on social media.

"Hats off to the people of Bhabanipur. Their mandate has made it clear what fate awaits an anarchic ruler," he said on X.

Banerjee and her allies bitterly criticised the "Special Intensive Revision (SIR)" of voter rolls in which nine million voters, representing 12 per cent of the state's electorate, were controversially removed.

"Assam and Bengal are clear cases of the election being stolen by the BJP with the support of the EC (Election Commission)," India's main opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said in a post on X on Monday, adding that he agrees with Banerjee that "more than 100 seats were stolen in Bengal."

The Election Commission has called the elections fair, defended the voter list revision to take into account absentee or deceased voters and hailed high voter turnouts in West Bengal.

The BJP won 206 seats in West Bengal's 294-member assembly, with the TMC getting 81 and the Congress party managing just two wins.

The BJP's vote share is 45.8 per cent compared with 40.8 per cent support for the TMC.

Meanwhile, Modi along with top party leaders celebrated his party's election wins at the party headquarters in New Delhi.

He told his cheering supporters that "a new chapter has begun in the destiny of West Bengal."

Modi also hailed the party's victory in Assam state, where it will form a government for the third consecutive five-year term.

The BJP's seat tally in Assam is 82, followed by 19 seats for the Congress, and 10 each for the Bodoland Peoples Front and the Asom Gana Parishad.

In Puducherry, the BJP scored wins in four seats and its regional ally All India N.R. Congress won 12 seats to secure a combined majority in the 30-member legislature.

In the southern state of Kerala, the Indian National Congress emerged as the single largest party by winning 63 seats and its alliance partner Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) won 22 seats, enough to enjoy a comfortable majority in the 140-member house.

The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) returns to power after a decade-long rule of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) in the state with a population of more than 35 million. - BERNAMA