These Assembly elections were the rare polls in a long time in which two Opposition parties, the Trinamool Congress and DMK, were seen to be having an edge against the mighty BJP. In the end, it was the BJP that emerged stronger.

The BJP’s victory in West Bengal even as it retained Assam for the third time marks a new high in the expansion of the party in India. Once considered a force only in the Hindi belt, it has extended its reach to all of Eastern India by seizing the Bengal fortress, after having conquered the West. While the South remains out of reach, the states under the BJP now constitute almost 80% of the population of India, as per the 2011 Census.

Monday’s results also mean that the BJP has eradicated virtually all rival satraps who could pose a challenge to its authority, with the defeats of Mamata Banerjee, M K Stalin and Pinarayi Vijayan following the enfeeblement of Sharad Pawar and Arvind Kejriwal , and the fading away of Nitish Kumar and Naveen Patnaik.

In the South as well, sources…