Shikha Mukerjee | Punitive Governance Leads to Politics of Victimisation

The script for the elections in four states -- Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Assam and Kerala -- scheduled for 2026 is being written by the parties in power and parties in the Opposition because there is no room for complacency. In three of the four states, parties in opposition to the BJP are in power and these parties are constituents of the effectively defunct Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance. The 2026 calendar is consequently more significant than a routine round of Assembly elections.

Each of the three Opposition-ruled states is crafting its own war strategy. The Assembly elections will be as much about local issues, state governance as it will be about the Centre’s propensity, under Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, to adopt punitive measures against disobliging non-compliant states.

The narrative is being shaped by primarily five issues: identity, culture, religion, money and the unequal power relationship between the states and the Centre. For the Opposition to survive and sustain a limping democracy, in all its diversity, the DMK, Trinamul Congress and either one of the two alliances, the CPI(M)-led LDF or the Congress-led UDF, must find ways of winning, because the alternative is either the BJP or its allies and proxies.

From playing footsie, cooperative federalism style, with the BJP with an eye to getting the Modi government to pay dues owed to the state as Kerala has done to joining combat over Centre’s discriminatory policies and retaliatory measures like Tamil Nadu over language nationalism through the three-language New Education Policy or apprehensions that there would be a relative decline in the number of constituencies as and when the delimitation is announced, the states are preparing for battle, with the regional challenger as well as the BJP and the campaign machine spearheaded by Mr Modi and masterminded by Mr Shah.

The Assembly outcomes are important for multi-party democracy, federalism and the BJP. As Opposition-ruled states, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, with a total of 88 Lok Sabha seats, constitutes just over 16 per cent of the total 543 elected seats; the three states together constitute over 37 per cent of the non-BJP, now-defunct INDIA group. Any change that weakens the base of the DMK in Tamil Nadu, where the BJP is working hard to stitch together an Opposition, of the TMC in West Bengal, where the BJP is the principal challenger with 65 seats out of 294 in the state Assembly, or in Kerala, where the Left Democratic Front with 99 seats out of 170 under Pinarayi Vijayan’s leadership, is up against the Congress-led United Democratic Alliance on one hand and an aggressive BJP on the other, will significantly alter the dynamics of the BJP versus non-BJP Opposition fight.

Regardless of Mr Vijayan’s conciliatory breakfast meeting with Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in an obvious bid to persuade the Centre to release long-withheld dues, the fact is that all Opposition-ruled states have been engaged in a long-running dispute with the Modi government over money. The Centre under Mr Modi’s stewardship has deployed money as a weapon against Opposition-ruled states, though fights over fund release from the Centre to the states have a long history in India’s uniquely structured federal politics.

All three Opposition-ruled states have some things in common and a shared list of experiences that makes the forthcoming 2026 elections a bigger battle with consequences for national politics and the agenda of defending the Constitution and its founding principles. Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal have been at loggerheads with governors sent by the Centre. Of the many fights these states waged separately against the Centre on the Modi government’s systematic undermining of the Constitution and meddling in matters in violation of the federalist structure, the appointment of vice-chancellors of state universities and approval of legislation enacted by state Assemblies have been high-decibel clashes, to the point that the matter went to the Supreme Court. The apex court verdict in 2023 made it clear that governors must function within the boundaries set by the Constitution. The court said “the manner in which the role of governor as a symbolic head of state is performed is vital to safeguard federalism, which is held to be a basic structure of the Constitution”. It said that “the exercise of unbridled discretion in areas not entrusted to the discretion of the governor risks walking roughshod over the working of a democratically-elected government at the state”.

Common causes don’t make for a common strategy. In each state, the combatants are different. In Tamil Nadu, the Congress is an ally of the DMK; in Kerala, the Congress-led UDF is the challenger to the CPI(M)-led LDF; in West Bengal, the Congress, CPI(M) and BJP are separately fighting the TMC.

Unlike Kerala, where Mr Vijayan, for reasons that are critical to defeating the UDF, has to necessarily find ways of wooing the Modi government, even as he vents against the Centre’s discrimination and punitive measures, the CPI(M) in West Bengal has finally come up with one move that allows it to take on the TMC and BJP for different reasons. After the BJP’s Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari declared when the BJP wins in 2026, all Muslim MLAs of the TMC would be “thrown out of the state Assembly”, the CPI(M) seized it as an opportunity to take on both the BJP and TMC in different ways. It announced that FIRs would be filed against all hate speeches because the state police under Mamata Banerjee’s leadership has failed to do so. The expectation seems to be that the CPI(M) can insert itself between the TMC and BJP to create a distinctive space in the crowded politics of West Bengal.

Based on common causes and a shared opposition to the BJP, the INDIA bloc was constituted to fight against the Modi government in its bid for a third term. The success of the INDIA group in snatching away a majority from the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha election was crafted by the strong fight put up in the states, of which Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal were important locations. For the fight to continue, even if the INDIA collective remains defunct, the Opposition needs to keep its hold over these three states, especially after the defeat of the now disintegrating Maha Vikas Aghadi in Maharashtra and the BJP’s win in Delhi and Haryana. Any further erosion of strength in terms of territory in the non-BJP opposition would deepen the crisis of democracy, federalism and the basic structure of the Constitution in India.