Riding high on Modi's charisma, BJP remains India's pole party: Takeaways

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has reaffirmed its status as India’s pole party, beating principal opponent, the Congress, by leaps and bounds as it did in 2014. The party has yielded very little space to regional forces that at one point looked like standing up to some competition against the BJP and even aspiring to form a federal front as a third alternative.

Riding high on the charisma, credibility and ideological convictions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, complemented by the unflagging diligence and unerring strategising and planning by the BJP president, Amit Shah who showed remarkable resilience in accommodating allies punching above their weight and a formidable party machinery that was reinforced by the apparatuses spawned by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP comfortably secured a majority of its own, going by available trends and looked like cushioning its own strength with the gains made by its partners.
The biggest achievements of the Modi-Shah duo were to not let go of the BJP’s base in north and western India and enhancing that by breaching West Bengal, that was out of bounds for the party for a long time with a spectacular debut that kept the ruling Trinamool Congress on edge. Read More

Article Source -> Business Standard