3 min readMar 17, 2026 06:00 AM IST First published on: Mar 17, 2026 at 06:00 AM ISTWith the announcement of the schedule for elections in four states and one Union Territory by the Election Commission, the political battlelines are being sharpened again. For the BJP, at stake is the momentum it achieved, after the 2024 Lok Sabha setback, through successive assembly victories. Its successes in Haryana and Maharashtra, Delhi and Bihar, helped in restoring its sheen after it slipped below the majority mark in 2024. Now, if it returns to power in Assam and improves its tally in West Bengal, a key frontier for the party, where it has built itself up over less than a decade to become the principal challenger of the ruling TMC, if it registers gains in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, two southern states that have resisted it historically, it will have burnished the powerful narrative it projects of its winnability — leading the NDA in its third term at the Centre, and in power, singly or with allies, in 21 states and UTs. On the other side of the fence, the Opposition has more to gain, and more to lose. Opposition parties are incumbents in three of the poll-bound states — TMC in Bengal, DMK in Tamil Nadu, CPI(M) in Kerala. The outcomes in these polls will decide whether, and how strongly, the national Opposition can re-invigorate itself through the push-back, mainly by regional players, against the BJP.The campaigns for these states will shape the trajectory of vital issues. For one, the EC’s Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, which stoked controversy ahead of the Bihar election, has once again stirred up political dust in West Bengal. Here, the eligibility of 60 lakh voters is under adjudication, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is herself arguing the case against the EC in the SC and her party is piloting the bid in Parliament to impeach the CEC. The SIR is tied up with the BJP’s major poll plank and theme, in Assam and in Bengal: From the PM downwards, it speaks of the illegal immigrant, or the “ghuspaithiya”, as a threat to national unity and security. In Assam, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has taken this rhetoric to a new polarising pitch.AdvertisementIssues of federalism will be raised in the campaign for Tamil Nadu, where a new player has set off a frisson amid a decades-long status quo made of the alternation in power of the two big Dravidian parties. And in Kerala, pre-poll jostling is re-arranging traditional equations, with the ruling CPI(M) reversing its 2018 position on the Sabarimala temple entry issue, and the BJP addressing the “Christian” constituency. The upcoming contests will shape the story in these poll-bound states, but they will also be read for how they tweak the frame nationally.