Last July 2025, while interviewing the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), MA Baby, I reminded him of what Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky told Mensheviks— “Your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on—into the dustbin of history.” I was trying to tell him what many in Indian political circles tend to think about the Left parties today as its electoral relevance keeps shrinking. It’s a tad unfair to completely write off the Left as it is. They still have eight members in the Lok Sabha from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and Bihar.
Six months down the line, Kerala local body election results pose the same question to the Left parties after the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) came up trumps, winning four of the six municipal corporations, 54 of the 87 municipalities, seven of the 14 district panchayats, 79 of the 152 block panchayats, and 505 of the 941 village panchayats.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was ecstatic about the Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation results. Prime Minister Narendra Modi called it a “watershed moment” in Kerala politics. What he didn’t say was that the BJP performed much below the expectations, with the National Democratic Alliance’s vote share coming down to 15 per cent from 19 per cent in 2024 Lok Sabha polls. In 2020 local body polls, too, the BJP’s vote share was around 15 per cent. In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP secured its maiden victory in Kerala, with Suresh Gopi winning Thrissur. The party drew a blank in his constituency in the local body polls.
The BJP had won 35 and 34 seats in Thiruvananthapuram in the 2015 and 2020 local body elections, respectively. So, in 2025, in an election in which the sitting Congress MP, Shashi Tharoor, wasn’t exactly the party’s poster boy, the BJP could improve its tally from 34 to 50 in the 101-ward corporation. That must be disappointing for PM Modi and BJP chief strategist Amit Shah.
They would consider Tharoor a wild card that failed to deliver. He and his BJP rival, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, together secured around 73 per cent of the votes in the 2024 parliamentary election. It resulted in an increase of only 15 seats in the corporation. Meanwhile, the Congress’ tally actually doubled from 10 in 2020 to 19 this time. It’s hardly an achievement for a party that has virtually disowned its popular MP but the BJP obviously failed to capitalise on the Tharoor vs. the Congress fault line to the extent that it would have preferred.
Left’s existential debate
Local body polls don’t necessarily reflect the public mood in Assembly elections. But the fact is that the LDF’s dominance in 2015 and 2020 local body elections got reflected in its victories in 2016 and 2021 Assembly elections. In the 2010 local body elections, the UDF had a slight edge over the LDF, with the former leading in three and the latter in two corporations and similar leads in municipalities and other bodies. This close fight got reflected in the results in the 2011 Assembly elections, too, in which the UDF won 72 as against the LDF’s 68 in the 140-member Assembly.
Essentially, if one were to analyse the local body poll results in 2010, 2015 and 2020, the 2025 results should set alarm bells ringing in the LDF camp. That is to say that CM Pinarayi Vijayan, Kerala’s ‘Modi in a mundu’ or ‘dhoti-clad Modi’, is on a sticky wicket in the 2026 Assembly election.
He got this moniker from his critics who accuse him of running his party and the government in an autocratic fashion by muzzling dissent and following PM Modi’s governance model. For one, after winning the 2021 election, he dropped all the ministers of his previous Cabinet, including KK Shailaja, the health minister who had become so popular as the ‘Corona slayer’.
The 2026 Assembly election, however, looks tougher. If the local body election results get replicated at the Assembly level, it would be the first time in five decades that the Left would be out of power across the country. This has not happened since 1977.
The Left was in power from 1977 to 2011 in West Bengal and from 1993 to 2018 in Tripura. And it has been in power in Kerala since 2016. There were intervals when it lost power in individual states, but if it loses Kerala in 2026, it would be the first time since 1977 that the Left would not be part of the government in any Indian state.
The Left is staring at this gloomy prospect in its centenary year—the CPI was founded on 26 December 1925.
The 2026 elections
My yearend column is not just about the Left’s existential crisis in India, though. Because political junkies need to look ahead: What does 2026 look like in terms of politics in India? Extremely boring if one were to look at the broad, national picture. PM Modi is looking well-ensconced, especially after the latest NDA victory in Bihar that was preceded by spectacular victories in Delhi, Haryana and Maharashtra. His deputy, Amit Shah, is in full control of the BJP, especially after his acolyte Nitin Nabin is set to replace JP Nadda as the national party president.
Whatever happens in the elections in four states—Kerala, Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu- and one Union Territory of Puducherry, not much would change in national politics in a macro sense. Yet, there are five things that the results of these elections would have political junkies interested in.
First of all, let’s start with Kerala results. We can write the Left’s political obituary if ‘Modi-in-a-Mundu’ loses. After all, the Left has shown no stomach for a fight after losing in other states. Let’s just look at the big brother in the Left umbrella—the CPI(M). It got zero seats and 4.73 per cent votes in the 2021 West Bengal Assembly election—down by over 15 percentage points and 26 seats in the previous 2016 Assembly election. In the 2011 Assembly election, the CPI(M) got 40 seats and 30 per cent votes. So, it’s like a meltdown for the CPIM—from 40 to 26 to 0 in terms of seats and from 30 per cent to less than five per cent in the last three Assembly elections.
In the 2023 Tripura Assembly election, the CPI(M) got around 25 per cent votes, down by over 17 percentage points from the previous election. When I asked MA Baby about the Left’s growing irrelevance in India, he said, “Without the Communists and the Left, would there be a future for humanity, a future for the people of our country?”
Well, West Bengal and Tripura voters obviously didn’t see it that way. And in the larger national political context, what would the Left’s loss really change? Basically, nothing. The Left hardly makes a differentiator in India’s contemporary politics.
Vijayan is as pro-capital or pro-corporate as many of his BJP or Congress counterparts in another state may be. And Rahul Gandhi—or West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, for that matter—is more to the Left for all practical purposes than Kerala’s captain himself.
So, even if the LDF is replaced by the Congress-led UDF in Kerala—with a capital if, of course—nothing changes for national politics.
And that brings us to the first of the five things that should interest political junkies in the 2026 results. The next Kerala election will be a fight between two “Communists”—Rahul Gandhi and Pinarayi Vijayan—and it matters a lot to each of them, not to national politics.
The ‘Modi-in-mundu’ is today bigger than his party. He has promoted no second-rung leadership in his party, ensuring that if he goes down, so does his party—for good. Even if he or the party survives, it changes little in national politics.
The Kerala results are more important for Rahul Gandhi, who learnt his economic philosophy from late Comrade Sitaram Yechury. The ex-CPI(M) general secretary would have been proud.
Gandhi is smart enough to understand that he needs to re-legitimise his position as the face of Congress. The entire party, except his office staff and three-four of self-styled loyalists like KC Venugopal, Randeep Surjewala and the like—not more than the 50-odd people who turned up to hear him at Berlin’s Hertie school recently—sees a big ray of hope in his sister, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. Rahul Gandhi expelled a veteran Congress leader from Odisha, Mohammed Moquim, for saying that. He chose to ignore Imran Masood for making a similar suggestion. He may also choose to ignore Digvijaya Singh’s call for decentralisation of power and his praise for the BJP-RSS organisational structure.
Rahul Gandhi knows that these voices are only echoing what his party colleagues think, from the top to the bottom. But as long as the sister remains silent, these voices can be silenced and smothered. Winning Kerala would provide Rahul the legitimacy to do that, regardless of his own contribution.
We are talking hypothetically, of course. And if Gaurav Gogoi pulls off a miracle in Assam, Masoods and Singhs would have to look for rehabilitation somewhere else. Having said that, even if the Rahul-led Congress continues with its losing streak in 2026, would Priyanka Gandhi Vadra put her party over her brother and family? Let’s not go there.
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Future of Brand Modi
There are four other things that 2026 elections will decide. A major one is the tenacity of
Brand Modi. Go beyond the hype surrounding Assembly elections after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP won the Haryana and Maharashtra Assembly polls soon after the parliamentary elections and projected the results as a vindication of Brand Modi. They were not. In both states, the party hedged him. There were no “Modi ki Guarantee” slogans, and Modi was only one of the many faces—although bigger in dimensions—in the election posters.
In Jharkhand, his picture loomed large on posters with those guarantees, but the strategy failed. The BJP had an overwhelming victory in Delhi in 2025. But if PM Modi couldn’t swing it in 2015 and 2020 Assembly election, what suddenly made him a bigger wave in 2025? It wasn’t obviously Brand Modi. Because it should have worked more effectively in 2015, if not in 2020. Arvind Kejriwal should take the credit, in whichever way, for the 2025 results.
And let’s accept it. Bihar poll results were not about Brand Modi. That’s what makes the upcoming polls so important for him. Except in Assam—where Himanta Biswa Sarma is the BJP’s real brand—Modi is the party’s sole USP in other states, given that the party has no face in those places. In Kerala, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, the BJP’s biggest hope is in Brand Modi. Is it still so potent? Let’s see.
That brings us to the third point. The 2026 elections offer the BJP a great opportunity to prove that it’s not a North Indian party as its adversaries in the South would like the people to believe. The BJP’s triumphs in the South were all in Karnataka. It has been piggybacking on regional allies in all other southern states otherwise.
Can the BJP show its organic growth south of the Vindhyas? PM Modi is the best bet to break this stereotype of the Hindi-Brahmin-North-Indian party. If it can’t prove its adversaries wrong in 2026, it risks being seen as exactly that for a long time to come.
The fourth thing the 2026 Assembly elections will test is the reach and limits of BJP’s Hindutva agenda. With the minorities constituting a big bloc in most of the poll-bound states—27 per cent Muslims in West Bengal, roughly 46 per cent Muslims-Christians in Kerala, and 40 per cent Muslims (as CM Himanta Sarma claims) in Assam—can the BJP’s counter-polarisation work?
Whichever way the results go in these states, the BJP would have a lot to learn from the results.
Last but not least, the regional parties, which have made sub-nationalism—linguistic, ethnic, regional—their election planks, think they have found a counter to the BJP. The ruling party at the Centre has really struggled to beat this narrative. With PM Modi in his 12th year in office, it’s probably the best—if not the last—chance for the BJP to beat it.
DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. He tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)
So delhi, haryana, Maharashtra and bihar wins cannot be attributed to Modi since he has been around for 10+years. But all upcoming losses can be attributed to him. What a laughable assertion.