With the fall of Mamata Banerjee, the last of the major regional political warlords, the final chapter of an era has begun. The BJP’s strategies—specifically deployed against regional parties—are largely responsible for the state of affairs. Fully aware that regional parties posed the primary challenge to its quest for dominance, the BJP adopted tactics designed to weaken them and fill the resulting void.

Regional parties emerged, fuelled by distinct regional identities, in the wake of the Congress party’s weakening following the Nehru era. The year 1967 marked a turning point; for the first time since Independence, non-Congress governments were formed in eight States. This was the result of new regional parties whose support bases were confined to specific States or regions. That era, which began in 1967, is now fast coming to an end. The question is: why and how did it happen?

To understand the shrinking space for regional parties, we need to understand their origin and development in historical context. The political scientist Rajni Kothari described the pre-1967 period as a “One-Party Dominant System”, with the Congress invincible in both the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies until that year. Then, in 1967, a major blow was dealt to Congress dominance in Indian politics. Internal strife began within the party; India suffered the consequences of two wars along with a failure of the monsoon, which led to a subsistence crisis; and the death of two Prime Ministers in the short span of two years collectively produced political instability and economic crisis. The Congress barely managed to secure a majority in the Lok Sabha, losing 70 seats in the process. In-party factionalism had intensified at both the Central and State levels. In many States where the Congress failed to secure a majority, breakaway factions formed governments in alliance with opposition groups such as the Swatantra Party, the Jan Sangh, and the Praja Socialist Party. For instance, Rao Birender Singh formed the Vishal Haryana Party in Haryana, while senior Congress leader Chaudhary Charan Singh formed the Bharatiya Kranti Dal in Uttar Pradesh and became Chief Minister; a similar pattern unfolded in other States. However, as the Congress regained strength in the early 1970s, these newly emerged regional factions, recognising their weakening position, began merging with other parties.

The failed experiment of the Janata Party

1977 marked a historic moment when, for the first time, the Congress faced defeat in a Lok Sabha election, and a non-Congress government was formed at the Centre. The Janata Party, which defeated the Congress, was a conglomeration of national and regional parties that had come together knowing that none of them was strong enough to defeat the Congress single-handedly. The coalition experiment collapsed within three years, however, due to internal differences among the allies, allowing the Congress to regain control at the Centre for nearly a decade thereafter.

In 1989, when a faction led by V.P. Singh broke away from the Congress, opposition parties once again formed a coalition and ousted it. In the early 1980s, however, the Congress had already been losing ground in several States to new regional parties—the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in Andhra Pradesh, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) in Assam, the Janata Dal in Karnataka, and the Congress (Secular) in Maharashtra. The governments formed by these parties were more stable than those of the 1960s. Nevertheless, attempts to destabilise State governments by engineering splits and by invoking Article 356 continued unabated. Andhra Pradesh serves as a prime example: N.T.R.’s TDP was split, and a leader from the rival faction was sworn in as Chief Minister. In 1989, the S.R. Bommai government in Karnataka was dismissed before it could prove its majority in the Legislative Assembly. The ruling party at the Centre would instigate factionalism within the parties governing the States and then support the breakaway faction to form government. This trend persists today; the only difference is that the BJP has replaced the Congress.

Golden era for regional parties (1989–2014)

The era of coalition governments, which began in 1989, concluded 25 years later in 2014 when the BJP, under Narendra Modi’s leadership, succeeded in forming a government at the Centre on its own. For the preceding 25 years, however, the support of regional parties had become essential to secure a majority at the Centre. The two main rival parties—the Congress and the BJP—formed political alliances known as the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), respectively. To keep the BJP out of power, the Congress had no hesitation in seeking the support of smaller parties. Minority governments led by Chandra Shekhar, H.D. Deve Gowda, and I.K. Gujral relied heavily on various regional parties.

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Meanwhile, the BJP realised it could not succeed without the support of regional parties; and since these parties were primarily formed in opposition to the Congress, they had no qualms about backing the BJP. Regional parties such as the Shiv Sena, the Akali Dal, the Janata Dal, the Janata Dal (Secular) (JD(S)), and the Lok Dal needed the BJP’s support to counter the Congress in their respective States. Through these alliances, the BJP gained a foothold in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Odisha, Bihar, Punjab, and elsewhere. It was content to play junior partner in State Assemblies because, through the cooperation of these parties, it was strengthening its position at the Centre—eventually completing a full five-year term in power from 1999 to 2004.

The Congress, too, realised that returning to power at the Centre would be extremely difficult without the cooperation of regional parties. In 2004, it formed the UPA by bringing together 13 regional political parties, defeated the BJP-led NDA, and remained in power at the Centre until 2014. During this period, almost all of the country’s regional parties benefited from power in one coalition or another.

Declining strength of regional parties

Although the BJP used regional parties to strengthen its position, it had, since the 1980s, viewed these entities as threats to its vision of Akhand Bharat—an undivided India united under a single cultural identity—while also recognising that its lack of a strong base in many States compelled it to forge alliances. Initially, the BJP plays the role of junior partner; it strengthened its hand by allying with the Akali Dal in Punjab, the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in Odisha, and the JD(S) in Karnataka, before gradually assuming power. The link between the BJP’s growing strength and the weakening of regional parties is a consistent one. Through strategic manoeuvring, the BJP forms alliances, uses their voter base to strengthen itself, then pushes them to the margins or decimates them entirely.

In Maharashtra, the BJP was the natural junior partner of the Shiv Sena, which won more seats than the BJP in the Assembly elections of 1990, 1995, 1999, and 2004. After the death of Bal Thackeray and a shift in the national political landscape—marked by a weakening Congress and a strengthening BJP—the BJP reached a position by 2014 where it could contest elections in Maharashtra without the Shiv Sena. In the 2014 Assembly election, the BJP outperformed the Shiv Sena, securing 122 seats to the latter’s 63.

The BJP then consolidated its position by engineering splits within the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), parties that had posed a collective challenge to it in 2022 and 2023. The rebel factions helped the BJP retain power in Maharashtra. This pattern was repeated in Haryana, where the BJP had previously shared power with the Lok Dal and the Haryana Vikas Party. These alliances persisted until 2014, but in the 2014 Assembly election the BJP surpassed them and went on to form government on its own. Today, the regional parties that once facilitated the BJP’s entry into Haryana have been almost completely extinguished.

From Punjab to Odisha to Bihar

The story is more or less the same in Punjab, where the BJP-Akali Dal alliance that began in 1997 gave the BJP a foothold in the State. The Akali Dal has since dwindled almost to insignificance. In Odisha, the BJP used an alliance with the BJD to assume power, then moved to finish off the latter. A similar pattern is playing out in Bihar with Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), where the BJP has its own party member as Chief Minister for the first time, replacing Nitish Kumar.

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The pattern is clear: wherever the BJP believes it cannot win an election on its own, it forms an alliance, gradually marginalises the ally, then occupies the space the ally has vacated.

The most recent example is West Bengal, where Mamata Banerjee’s All India Trinamool Congress (AITMC) has now been routed by the BJP in the 2026 Assembly elections—the BJP winning 206 seats against the AITMC’s sharply reduced tally—confirming the trajectory the authors had anticipated.

The BJP’s next test may well be in Tamil Nadu, where the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), led by actor-politician Vijay, won 108 seats in the 2026 Assembly election, ending the DMK-AIADMK duopoly that had governed the State for 59 years. TVK has explicitly positioned itself as an ideological opponent of the BJP. Whether the BJP eventually attempts to penetrate the party’s organisational base—as it has done with other regional formations elsewhere—remains to be seen. For now, Tamil Nadu represents the clearest case of a new regional force that has, at least in the short term, resisted the national pattern.

In other words, through the systematic fragmentation of regional parties, the BJP is steadily advancing towards its long-held goal of uncontested national dominance. But the decimation of regional parties will have grave and far-reaching repercussions for federalism and democracy.

Rajendra Sharma is Senior Professor, Department of Political Science, Maharishi Dayanand University, Rohtak. 

Rajesh OP Singh is Doctoral Researcher, Department of Political Science, University of Delhi.