The Narendra Modi-Amit Shah BJP’s victory in West Bengal — this is the first time since 1972 that a “national” party that rules in Delhi will have won an election in the state — is unprecedented. The Congress governments in Kolkata for the first 30 years after Independence had a first-mover advantage, when power was a corollary of the single-party dominant system in a nascent democracy. The BJP in 2026 faced a formidable political force in Mamata Banerjee and the TMC: A leader with a history of slaying behemoths, not least the CPI(M), and a party system — a “syndicate” — that is enmeshed in almost every aspect of social, political, and economic life in the state.With victory in Bengal, and the return of Himanta Biswa Sarma in Assam, the NDA is now in power across east, west, and much of north India. There will, understandably, be pageantry and celebrations by the ruling party and its leaders over the next few days. Beyond the usual and beyond the electoral politics of the moment, the 2026 West Bengal election also marks a deeper inflection point for the ruling party and the Opposition.AdvertisementAlso Read | What changed for BJP in Bengal between 2021 and 2026?A ‘Bengali’ BJP?For the BJP, ruling Bengal will be a challenge of the kind it hasn’t faced across at least two registers. In large part, its phenomenal success across the country since 2014 has been based on tailoring its campaigns to the regional and cultural specificities of very diverse polities — from a base in Gujarat to the Hindi belt, to the Northeast, it has found a vocabulary and less recognised historical-cultural figures. A cynical extension of this has been its open-door policy for high-profile defectors, from Suvendu Adhikari to Sarma. This malleability, though, does not mean that the BJP is an “umbrella party”. Ideologically, it has been a flattening force in national politics. In Bengal, as in so many other states, its politics has relied on creating and consolidating the so-called “Hindu” vote, while demonising Muslims — whether as “Bangladeshi infiltrators” or through “love jihad”.West Bengal was the home of the militant stream of the freedom struggle, of Subhas Chandra Bose and his opposition to Gandhi and Nehru in the Congress. Since the early 20th century, it has been both part of the political mainstream and an outlier. Banerjee’s attempt at pitting Bengali identity against the BJP’s religious nationalism failed against anti-incumbency this election. Does that mean the sense of grievance and being left behind over the last half-century — and the wounded pride of once being the country’s intellectual, cultural and political centre — has evaporated? Likely not.The most urgent and difficult task for the BJP, then, is two-fold. First, to rewrite the story of a state that has long been in economic decline. Government largesse in terms of cash transfers and other welfare schemes alone cannot do this. Industrialisation, services and education — the state was once, long ago, a leader in all three. It needs to become that again.AdvertisementAlso Read | For decades, Bengal was an exception. Now it’s a chapter in the saffron storyTo make that happen in a sustainable and meaningful manner is the BJP’s second task. It must not simply take over the political structures of the party society left behind by the TMC. It must build state capacity outside of a cadre-government nexus.The fears that remainOver 90 lakh erstwhile voters were excluded in Bengal. Of these, the exclusion of 27 lakh in the second round – less than 2,000 had their franchise restored by the appellate tribunal — were particularly controversial. Several others went through an arduous process to ensure that their names are on the rolls. The Election Commission and the Supreme Court did not, by all accounts, do enough to make the process either transparent or foolproof, and the questions about their conduct will linger on. The scale of the BJP’s victory indicates that the deletion was not a decisive factor, though it could have helped shore up the final numbers. But beyond the legal and institutional dimensions lie deeper fears.First, the deletions raised the fear that the “purification” of the voter roll was also a way to target and exclude a large number of minorities. The SIR and the right to vote are, for many on the margins, inextricably linked with citizenship rights. The BJP will rule a state where about a third of the population are Muslims. What if its policies and actions in government echo the worst elements of the campaign trail? In a state where public life has been marred by violence too often, can the new government prevent fault lines from widening?Second, the SIR exercise in Bengal showed that there are few, if any, institutional constraints to an opaque process that can possibly lead to selective disenfranchisement. The BJP is now the ruling party in Bengal and at the Centre. The responsibility for the 27 lakh voters, many of them Muslims, lies with it. It should not be selective or divisive in its duty towards the people of the state.Also Read | Not another MGR: Why Vijay’s landslide victory in Tamil Nadu is differentFor the Opposition and TMC, a disconnectThe axes that frame the BJP’s success also define the contours of the TMC’s failure. Banerjee made her bones in politics as an underdog, a street fighter. And, a bird’s eye view of Indian politics, seen from Delhi, may make it seem that she was once again ranged against a political behemoth and the full power of the Centre. Voters, though, rarely have that view. As Vandita Mishra reported in this newspaper, in West Bengal, the centre of political gravity remains Banerjee: Perhaps more so than the BJP’s campaign, it was Mamata vs Mamata on the ground — it was her party that was the “system”. A politics of rebellion and of being the underdog, in such a scenario, was bound to yield a diminishing return. Relying on a largely bhadralok — a class that is not known for its political loyalty in the state — notion of “Bengali” identity too showed a disconnect.you may likeWith the loss of Bengal, what will the national Opposition do next? The BJP arguably has more resources and institutional backing than any other political force in Indian history. Time and again, from Assam and Bengal to UP and Tripura, it has shown it can be ideologically rigid and tactically nimble. For the INDIA bloc — disparate parties with competing interests — combating this is difficult. Yet, it has not tried hard enough.For too long, too many parties have failed to recognise not just a fundamental shift in India’s political centre, but also in the people. Lip service to ideals, without creative communication and new policy ideas — translated on the ground during elections — they cannot match the BJP. But perhaps most of all, parties need to listen to the people rather than telling people what they want and need from their leaders.The writer is deputy associate editor, The Indian Express. aakash.joshi@expressindia.com