With the defeat of the All-India Trinamool Congress after an uninterrupted stint of 15 years in power in West Bengal and the surprise defeat of the DMK in Tamil Nadu, the standing of regional parties has hit a new low. While the TVK is a new regional player that has done very well in Tamil Nadu, the regional framing of polls in the southern state has nevertheless suffered a loss, as the DMK was the strongest proponent of Tamil identity and politics. Anti-incumbency clearly defeated the DMK’s dogged framing of the elections as one to be fought around Tamil pride, with Chief Minister M K Stalin — who was championing the Tamil cause — losing his own election. This is just the latest jolt to regional politics. While the Aam Aadmi Party is technically a national party, it was also powerful only in certain regions like Punjab and Delhi. However, its regional footprint has been shrinking. Recently, the AAP lost seven Rajya Sabha MPs to the BJP, soon after losing the Delhi assembly elections to the BJP. The CPI(M), which is also technically a national party, had in effect shrunk to one state, Kerala, thus becoming strictly a regional player. The victory of the Congress, another national party, over the CPI(M) in Kerala means that another force in a single state has suffered a setback. Similarly, the BJP had defeated Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal in Odisha in 2024, ending Patnaik’s 24-year stint as CM. One regional party that has bucked the trend after 2024 is Hemant Soren’s Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, which succeeded in beating the BJP in the last Assembly polls in the state. That apart, Omar Abdullah’s National Conference is holding its own in Jammu and Kashmir. However, the Union Territory with its Muslim majority is not the ideal place for the BJP to establish itself. The shiftThe electoral turn of the last two years, thus, shows a massive shift towards national parties – the Samajwadi Party’s impressive tally of 37 in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls notwithstanding – at a time when the opposition has been flagging federal concerns, and accusing the Centre of withholding funds, misusing agencies against its leaders and also trying to change the “electoral map” of India through delimitation on the latest census figures, which would diminish the relative share of the southern states in the Lok Sabha. The period from the decline of the Congress post-1989 marked the high point of regional parties, leading to 25 years of coalition politics. This was the phase where even states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar saw regional parties holding sway. This era was one of coalition politics, when the NDA, carved out by the BJP with multiple regional parties, and the UPA, having the Congress and “secular” regional parties, ran coalition governments that had to be sensitive towards regional concerns to survive.The rise of Narendra Modi in 2014 unsettled this equilibrium. The BJP began to dominate western, central and northern India, leading to a decline in the standing of SP, RJD, BSP, Shiv Sena, and NCP. The last two in fact split during Modi’s second term, with the factions that got the original party symbol joining hands with the NDA. The JD(U) survived in Bihar, with Nitish Kumar nimbly moving from the NDA to the opposition and back. However, even in Bihar, the pattern of a move towards national politics picked up, finally installing a BJP Chief Minister in the state. The opposition’s challenge is that while it is flagging federal concerns, voters seem to be moving towards national parties, particularly the BJP, with each passing year. However, with the Congress, despite its improved showing in 2024 when it secured 99 seats in the Lok Sabha, not being able to position itself as an alternative to the BJP in the last 12 years, the need for opposition unity has made multiple parties articulate the language of federal concerns.Story continues below this adThe cases filed against many opposition leaders have also added to the framing of politics in federal terms. The same, however, is not impacting voter behaviour, with the BJP emerging as more powerful than in the past in recent cycles of Assembly elections. It is largely in south India that regional parties are still influential. But they are under pressure here, too. Even in Telangana in December 2023, the Congress was able to defeat the BRS, a regional party that had years ago taken credit for the formation of Telangana. The perception that its fall from 303 to 240 seats in the Lok Sabha in 2024 would dent the BJP has not proved correct till now. Allies JD(U) and TDP have refrained from flexing muscle, and have been with the BJP even when the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill fell in the Lok Sabha, despite the opposition charge that it was a ruse for bringing delimitation to the detriment of southern states.