A supine opposition can’t bite, killer BJP on the march

The 2026 assembly elections have exposed the Opposition. They do not have a strategy against the killer spirit of the BJP. They are fragmented, least bothered about the electoral system, Election Commission, and alleged manipulations. Each party is in deep fear against the machinations of institutions and prefer not to act.
The Opposition had the best opportunity after the 2024 elections. They were commanding the polity. The BJP could see it and its ancillary organisations, which had kept of the polls, realised their mistake or was it a deliberate way to teach the BJP leaders a lesson, who had announced that they did not need their parent organisation? The ‘child’ suffered, realised the mistake and was pardoned. Subsequent long campaigns in Bengal demonstrate that not only at the political front but also in overall strategisation, the parent is more powerful and could rummage the Opposition, that had gone supine after the formation of the grand alliance, INDIA.
Except in the memories of the people, INDIA does hardly exist anywhere. Even TMC leader Mamata Banerjee had ditched INDIA a number of times in Parliament and outside. Her association was lukewarm except at the last special session of Parliament on April 16-17. It was late enough. Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar had already spread his tentacles all over Bengal by transferring 820 officials, positioning 2.5 lakh central forces resembling an occupying army, deleting 91 lakh votes and 27 lakh only for logical discrepancy with unfortunate court sanctions. (Contrast -In Assam EC transferred less than a dozen officials)
And the Opposition responded with a studied silence, not a vociferous countrywide protest. They were least bothered about a first – the electoral rolls not being finalised before the announcement of the polls. Disenfranchisement cost them Bengal and Tamilnadu for sure. But they behaved like good boys instead of ensuring corrections like active students to counter the faultlines in the question paper.
They got into the trap, be it Mamata Banerjee, Rahul Gandhi, Stalin, Pinarayi Vijayan and his Left leaders. Congress-UDF in Kerala were spared because it suited the BJP’s thin forces concentrated in Bengal. Next target is the Congress in Kerala and Samajwadi Party-Congress in UP. A supine, comfort-loving dictatorial Congress or SP or UDF allies would not be able to save themselves. They are their at the mercy of the RSS-BJP.
Yes, today the RSS-BJP is controlling the Indian political scenario. None is there to check their ashwamedha horse. The opposition did raise only a feeble voice against inclusion of 40 lakh voters in Maharashtra but they could not turn it into an electoral issue. They meekly accepted the rout of BJP-Naveen Patnaik in Odisha. Their voices were choked against electoral discrepancies in Haryana, Andhra and elsewhere.
And the fragmented Opposition – the Left and Congress in particular – expected a victory against a ruthless enemy. Rightfully or not, they were eliminated in Bengal and thrown into a quagmire through a pliable Governor in TN, who refused to accept claim of TVK’s Vijaya to be invited to form governent. The small but significant win of the BJP at Puducherry gets into oblivion as the Opposition stalwarts even refuse to discuss it.
The Opposition did not even study the methods of the BJP. Its arms in Bengal spread out all over during the last 18 months to remotest villages in western parts of the state around Purulia. In nine western districts, the TMC scored a zero. They were in remote jungles of Sundarbans, where the minority population swelled during the last over 20 years. Recall how Mamata Banerjee herself raised the issues in Parliament during early 2000s. Whether they are “ghuspaithiaya” or not they are behaving awfully without caring for the local administration.
The TMC and the opposition ignored their threat but BJP and its friends turned into an issue to polarise the electorate.
It calls for study why the minority aggressive behaviour was not countered or tamed or strong dialogue established in those hinterlands.
There is no way to ignore a social crisis as an aberration or trying to benefit out of it. The TMC suffered and the Opposition is losing its ground.
The inebriated SP feels it is safe with its PDA vote in UP. They are unaware that in small groups BJP volunteers are nibbling these. As not the Bengal polls are over, large swarms of BJP cadres are to swamp UP and devastate the supposed unfenced bastion. The 2027 may not become a repeat of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The Opposition is at the verge of getting exterminated in UP if the Congress remains confined to Janpath or SP to Saifai, DMK calls for a separate block in Parliament and ignore the ECI overtures. DMK forgets that but for Mrs Indira Gandhi leaving TN alone in 1971, the DMK would have been nowhere Would they become a cipher now? Not unlikely.
If the opposition wants to wake up and cater to their voters, they have to come out of the slumber, organise countrywide rallies and raise voice against the ECI highhandedness, unemployment, monopolised industrial favours, marginalisation of the people, falling incomes and labelling of the country as “electoral autocracy” as classified the V-Dem Institute’s Democracy Report 2026. The report ranks India as 105th on the Liberal Democracy Index. The report cites intensified nationalist rhetoric, reduced freedom of expression, and pressures on civil society under the BJP government as reasons for this classification.
The Opposition perhaps is not even aware of the report. The opportunities are not lagging. The country doubts whether the Opposition would be able to stand up and stop the march of the BJP. If it does fine, else the writing is on the wall.