Beyond Congress-mukt Bharat: the shrinking space for regional parties

Published 12 June 2026 · politics

The political slogan of Congress-mukt Bharat (Congress-free India) was first used by the BJP on January 14, 2014, barely four months before Prime Minister Narendra

The political slogan of Congress-mukt Bharat (Congress-free India) was first used by the BJP on January 14, 2014, barely four months before Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power at the Centre. “Congress Mukt Bharat BJP ka naara nahi hai, jan jan ka sankalp hai (Congress free India isn’t just a BJP slogan but people’s slogan),” Mr. Modi, then the BJP’s prime ministerial face, told an enthusiastic crowd at a public rally in Goa. The slogan, since then, became the leitmotif of the BJP’s attack on the Congress as it sought to position itself as the pan-India alternative. But now, when the BJP has more or less replaced the Congress system — a term used by political scientist Rajni Kothari to describe one-party dominance — it’s the regional players who have been hit the hardest. The unravelling of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) post the humiliating defeat in the recent West Bengal Assembly polls reflects the existential questions that many regional parties now face.

And this is despite the argument that regional players have outperformed the Congress in one-on-one contests against the BJP. Take the Lok Sabha polls, as an example. The BJP’s success rate against the Congress on seats which witnessed a bi-polar contest was 70%. But in West Bengal, its success rate against the TMC was 33%, and in Uttar Pradesh (U.P.), it had a strike rate of 45% against the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party, even though the SP has consistently lost two U.P. Assembly elections to the BJP since 2017. Such comparisons are misleading. Regional parties may still defeat the BJP in direct contests, but they are increasingly vulnerable to splits, defections and absorption into BJP-led political coalitions. In Maharashtra, both the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena and the Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party not only saw a vertical split, but the leaders also lost their party symbols to the breakaway factions.

In Bihar, where the 2025 Assembly polls were contested on Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar’s governance record, the BJP has been able to instal its own Chief Minister for the first time ever. And in Assam, the relationship between the BJP and the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) has completely reversed, with the AGP, once the flag-bearer of Assamese identity, reduced to being a junior partner. While the now-repealed controversial farm laws forced the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) to break its alliance with the BJP in Punjab, in Odisha, the Biju Janata Dal, which had maintained friendly relations with the Narendra Modi government, has been replaced by the BJP as the ruling party in the State. Professor Kumar Sanjay, who teaches history at Delhi University’s Shraddhanand College, says the BJP’s current trajectory reflects the unitary approach to politics, once associated with the Congress, which seeks to weaken regional parties and satraps.