The squeeze play: How BJP is shrinking space for regional parties – decoded | India News

When results from Maharashtra’s long-delayed civic polls came on January 16, it became clear that the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) has made it to the top once again. The BJP swept 1,425 of 2,869 seats across 29 municipal corporations, a strike rate of nearly 50%. In Mumbai’s Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), a Shiv Sena citadel for 25 years, slipped out of regional control.Since 2014, the BJP’s rise has not dismantled regional politics outright. Instead, it has steadily shrunk the space in which regional parties operate, limiting their ability to convert votes into seats, state power into national leverage and identity politics into a sustained election issue. Let’s take a look at how that containment has unfolded, state by state.

Maharashtra

Recent civic polls in Maharashtra offer a clear snapshot of regional parties containment in action.In the January 2026 civic elections, the BJP emerged as the single largest party across major urban bodies. In Mumbai’s BMC, it won 89 of 227 wards on its own. With ally Eknath Shinde’s faction of the Shiv Sena adding another 29, the ruling Mahayuti crossed the majority mark. Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT) was reduced to 65 seats, down from more than 130 in 2017.

Across the state, the picture was bleaker for regional forces. In Pune Municipal Corporation, the BJP crossed 110 seats, while the combined strength of the two Pawars – Sharad and Ajit Pawar – remained in double digits. Pimpri-Chinchwad, another Nationalist Congress Party bastion, delivered 87 seats to the BJP.These civic polls were delayed for nearly nine years due to legal and administrative hurdles.The BJP framed its campaign around the idea of a “triple-engine sarkaar”, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Centre and Devendra Fadnavis at the state level. Welfare schemes such as ‘Majhi Ladki Bahin’ found traction among women voters, while youth backing was decisive: nearly 47% of voters aged 18–25 reportedly favoured the BJP. But the most decisive factor was political fragmentation. The 2022 Shiv Sena split turned Shinde into a BJP ally, hollowing out the party’s organisational spine. The 2023 NCP fracture left Sharad Pawar and Ajit Pawar competing for the same shrinking base. Even Uddhav Thackeray’s tactical alliance with the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) split Marathi identity votes in dozens of wards, indirectly benefiting the BJP.

Bihar

In Bihar, the regional parties have not been eliminated, but absorbed and subordinated within a BJP-led political framework.In 2025 Bihar assembly elections, the NDA won over 200 of 243 seats, its most decisive victory in the state in decades. Within that, the BJP emerged as the single largest party, overtaking chief minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) in numerical strength for the first time. Seat data underlined the altered balance of power.The BJP secured 89 seats, while JD(U) followed with 85 seats. Smaller allies such as the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), Hindustani Awam Morcha and Rashtriya Lok Morcha added to the NDA tally. In contrast, the opposition collapsed. The Rashtriya Janata Dal, which had won 75 seats in 2020, was reduced to roughly 25 seats, while the Congress slipped to single digits.For regional parties in Bihar, this was not merely a defeat. It was a reordering.Nitish Kumar retained the chief ministership, but the arithmetic left little ambiguity. Power within the alliance now flows from the BJP outward, not the other way around. JD(U), once the pivot of Bihar politics and a perennial kingmaker in Delhi, now operates within limits defined by its larger partner.The RJD’s trajectory is equally telling. Tejashwi Yadav’s party got the highest vote share of 23% in the elections: BJP – 20.08%, JD(U) – 19.25%. Despite retaining a loyal base among Muslims and Yadavs, the vote share did not translate into seats. Welfare schemes, infrastructure expansion and caste-neutral messaging from the NDA fractured older social coalitions. Bihar results show a crucial feature of the BJP’s containment strategy: regional parties are allowed to survive, but not to dominate. Containment here does not mean extinction.It means subordination — a shift from being the senior partner to alliance dependents in a political order anchored firmly by the BJP.

Uttar Pradesh

In India’s most populous state, the BJP’s containment strategy has played out through electoral arithmetic. In 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP-led NDA won 64 of 80 seats. On the other hand, Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party, despite being opposition in the 2022 assembly with 111 of 403 seats, struggled to expand its footprint. The Bahujan Samaj Party, once a pivotal force, was reduced to near irrelevance, winning just one seat.Vote shares tell a revealing story. BJP got around 36% vote share in 2024, while Samajwadi part got near 29%.

This gap was widened by welfare politics. Schemes such as PM Awas Yojana, free rations and direct benefit transfers helped the BJP get more votes.Construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya also helped consolidate Hindu votes across caste.

West Bengal: a fortress with shrinking margins

The Trinamool Congress remains dominant in West Bengal, but the BJP is up for the challenge.In the 2021 assembly elections, TMC won 213 of 294 seats. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, it retained 29 of 42 seats, getting around 45% of vote share. The BJP, however, consolidated itself as the principal challenger, holding roughly 23% of the vote share. The trajectory matters. BJP’s vote share surged from 18% in 2019 to nearly 38% in the 2021 assembly polls, driven by defections, organisational expansion and polarised campaigning. While welfare schemes such as Lakshmir Bhandar helped TMC stabilise its base, urban Kolkata and tribal belts like Jangalmahal saw growing BJP penetration.Mamata Banerjee remains powerful within the state. But will she continue to enjoy this power for log? We will know in a few months as Bengal votes for its next assembly.

Delhi: the fall of a regional experiment

The 2025 Delhi assembly elections marked a turning point.The BJP won 48 of 70 seats, ending a decade of rule by the Aam Aadmi Party and reclaiming the capital after nearly 27 years. AAP’s vote share remained competitive, but BJP’s organisational depth, candidate spread and campaign scale ensured superior seat conversion.For AAP, the loss was existential. Once projected as a governance-driven alternative with national ambitions, it now faces questions about relevance beyond Punjab. Delhi’s verdict showed that even a high-visibility regional model can be overwhelmed by a national party’s machinery.

Odisha and Andhra Pradesh: Swift reversals

Odisha saw one of the sharpest collapses. In 2019, the Biju Janata Dal won 113 of 147 assembly seats. By 2024, BJP swept 20 of 21 Lok Sabha seats and won 78 assembly seats, ending Naveen Patnaik’s long rule. Leadership vacuum and BJP’s appropriation of Odia identity accelerated the fall.In Andhra Pradesh, the YSR Congress Party’s dominance evaporated in 2024, when a TDP-BJP-JSP alliance won 135 of 175 assembly seats, pushing YSRCP to the margins despite a significant residual vote share.Both states show how quickly regional dominance can collapse when organisational depth and narrative control shift.

The Southern Wall

Tamil Nadu: Outlier that resists

Tamil Nadu remains the clearest exception.In the 2021 assembly elections, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam won 133 of 234 seats. In 2024, the DMK-led alliance secured 22 of 39 Lok Sabha seats. BJP’s vote share remains in single digits.Strong linguistic identity, entrenched welfare politics and the legacy of Dravidian ideology have limited BJP’s expansion. Seat conversion for regional parties remains efficient, and internal splits have so far been avoided.

Kerala: Ideological resilience

Kerala’s alternating Left and Congress coalitions continue to resist national consolidation. BJP’s vote share hovers around 11–15%, with limited seat gains despite a strong cadre base.High political literacy, entrenched welfare systems and cohesive minority blocs have constrained BJP’s growth. Yet even here, regional dominance remains confined within state borders, offering little national leverage.

The BJP playbook, in numbers

Nationally, the BJP-led NDA governs 19 states and is currently at its highest-ever strength in atate assemblies. The BJP alone presently has 1654 MLAs across state assemblies. Regional parties together hold roughhly about 31% of MLAs.BJP’s containment strategy is consistent:

Urbanisation, aspirational voting and fatigue with dynastic feuds have amplified these effects.

The larger picture

India’s regional parties are not extinct. They still win elections and govern states. But the data since 2014 shows their power is increasingly bounded.Civic routs in Maharashtra, the fall of AAP in Delhi, and reversals in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh all point to the same conclusion: the pathway from state power to national influence has narrowed dramatically.As 2026 assembly elections approach in five states and UT, the challenge for regional parties is no longer survival alone. It is to reinvention in current political climate. Will Mamata Banerjee and MK Stalin be able to hold their grounds or will the BJP push their parties to a wall? We will know by mid-year.