Ahmedabad Times

Tamil Nadu’s greatest entry

Earlier than a single vote was forged, Tamil Nadu’s 2026 election was already marked by tragedy and it forged a shadow over every thing that adopted.On 27 September 2025, Vijay, Tamil cinema’s reigning megastar and founding father of the two-year-old Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), held a rally in Karur. He was imagined to arrive round midday. He arrived greater than six hours late. By then, tens of 1000’s of individuals had packed a venue permitted for 10,000. When his convoy lastly appeared, the group surged. Then once more. Then once more. Forty-one individuals have been killed. The useless included kids. Tamil Nadu had not seen a dying toll like that at a political rally in dwelling reminiscence.cTVK leaders have been booked for culpable murder. The CBI was known as in. The marketing campaign that was imagined to announce Vijay as Tamil Nadu’s nice political disruptor had as a substitute produced its darkest pre-election second.And but, as a result of that is Tamil Nadu, and since Vijay is Vijay, the crowds saved coming.Sources contained in the social gathering stated Vijay had turn into extremely cautious about attending giant public gatherings following the Karur tragedy. A number of scheduled occasions have been cancelled regardless of election permissions being granted. In Tiruverumbur, a TVK candidate campaigned with a Vijay cut-out. In Kolathur, one other used a lookalike to draw crowds. The DMK, sensing weak spot, pounced. Deputy Chief minister Udhayanidhi Stalin mocked the restricted schedule brazenly, describing the strategy as a “work-from-home” marketing campaign.The permission battles turned their very own subplot. With lower than a month to go for polling, TVK utilized for a rally at Perambur’s Mullai Nagar junction. On the eve of the occasion, Chennai Company officers allegedly dug pits on the venue and erected iron boundaries, rendering the location unusable. A police inspection concluded the placement could not accommodate 3,000 individuals. Vijay condemned the flip of occasions furiously, calling it a “fascist assault on democracy” and accusing sure officers of colluding to disrupt the rally. The DMK known as it routine administration. No person believed both facet fully.Vijay selected to personally contest from Perambur — the constituency the place he grew up — and from Tiruchirappalli East, each seats at present held by the DMK with snug margins. TVK leaders framed this as a marker of confidence somewhat than warning. The sitting MLA in Tiruchirappalli East dismissed Vijay as a non-factor. The voters, it appeared, had not acquired the memo.

Assam: ‘Level-blank shot’

In Assam, the defining marketing campaign second wasn’t a rally or a speech. It was an 18-second clip that the ruling social gathering posted, deleted, after which, in an act of extraordinary brazenness, partially introduced again.On February 7, the BJP’s Assam unit shared a video on X that confirmed chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma symbolically taking pictures Muslims. The clip contained what regarded like actual footage of Sarma wielding an air rifle, interspersed with AI-generated pictures of two people in skullcaps and beards being shot at. The publish was captioned “Level clean shot.” Earlier than it disappeared from the platform, the video had amassed over one million views.Congress known as it a name to mass violence. The CPI and CPM went to the Supreme Court docket. When requested within the state meeting about his discriminatory insurance policies, Sarma was characteristically unrepentant- “I’ll take sides. Will not let ‘Miya’ Muslims take over Assam.”“In a rickshaw, if the fare is Rs 5, give them Rs 4. Provided that they face troubles will they depart Assam.” Defending the remarks subsequently, Sarma insisted he was referring to unlawful immigrants from Bangladesh.His authorities concurrently introduced a coverage of arms licences for natives in distant areas. When requested if this risked turning Assam explosive, his reply was direct, “I need the scenario in Assam to be explosive.”The actual irony on the coronary heart of this story is that Sarma is an unlikely extremist. When he was sworn in as Assam’s chief minister in 2021, no person might have pointed to an ideological biography that predicted what adopted. He had served three consecutive phrases on a Congress ticket and been a minister within the Tarun Gogoi authorities, holding portfolios starting from well being to finance to agriculture.He had no deep roots within the RSS. By the measure of the motion he finally joined, he was a latecomer. And but, since becoming a member of the BJP in 2015, his rhetoric has recurrently outpaced that of many politicians with lifelong Sangh Parivar roots.

Zubeen query

Woven into the Assam marketing campaign was additionally the title of Zubeen Garg.Garg, 52, was the state’s most beloved singer, a voice that had travelled properly past language, into the each day lifetime of the Northeast. On September 19, 2025, he died whereas swimming off an island in Singapore. A coroner’s courtroom there known as it unintended drowning. Sarma didn’t settle for that. He claimed Garg was “murdered as a part of a conspiracy.”Congress noticed the opening and took it. It promised voters justice in Garg’s dying inside 100 days of coming to energy. Sarma pushed back- the judiciary, he stated, was not a marketing campaign promise, and no social gathering might assure a courtroom final result on an election timeline. However in Assam, the place Garg’s songs have been much less leisure than reminiscence, that sort of correctness had restricted attain.

The 90 lakh query

In West Bengal, probably the most extraordinary variety of the marketing campaign season wasn’t a seat projection or a vote-share determine. It was 90 lakh — the variety of voters erased from the electoral rolls earlier than a single vote was forged.The Particular Intensive Revision of electoral rolls resulted in near 90 lakh names being faraway from West Bengal’s voter lists, lots of them concentrated in border areas and non-elite rural, caste, and minority-heavy districts. Of those that filed appeals, roughly 27 lakh people sought restoration of their voting rights. Nearly 1,400 voters have been truly in a position to safe reduction via the tribunals set as much as overview instances — leaving nearly all candidates with out restoration.1,400 out of 27 lakh. The TMC stated the train risked disenfranchising real voters. The BJP stated it was a needed correction of bogus entries and names of unlawful migrants. The matter went to courtroom.In opposition to this backdrop, West Bengal recorded its highest-ever voter turnout. The primary part noticed a 92.8% turnout, a file, arriving after the 90-lakh discount within the voter roll earlier within the 12 months.Mamata Banerjee, in search of a fourth consecutive time period, delivered one of many most-quoted traces of your complete election season. At a rally in Kolkata’s Chowringhee, she stated: “Bear in mind this, you can not defeat us. We combat towards injustice; we combat for our rights. I used to be born in Bengal, and I shall breathe my final on this very Bengal. I’ll take over Delhi as soon as I’ve secured victory in Bengal. I’ll achieve this by rallying all of the political events collectively. I will not need the seat of energy; I need the entire dismantling of the BJP in Delhi.”Amit Shah, campaigning in Kolkata on the identical time, responded with fun, saying she had nothing left in Bengal, so how would she go to Delhi. The alternate dominated headlines for days.

Fish, identification and political theatre

But when one picture captured the feel of West Bengal’s 2026 marketing campaign extra vividly than any speech or slogan, it was a fish.Koustav Bagchi, a lawyer-turned-politician and the BJP’s candidate from Barrackpore, moved from door to door in crisp white and crimson conventional apparel, a fish in hand. Drums thudded behind him as supporters chanted his title.A number of kilometres away in Kolkata’s port space, one other BJP candidate, Rakesh Singh, staged the same spectacle, dressed for impact and flanked by social gathering employees, hoisting a fish repeatedly as he moved via early-morning crowds, taking up metropolis mayor Firhad Hakim in one of many state’s high-profile contests.In Bengal, fish is greater than meals. It’s the bloodstream of the delicacies. In 2026, that resonance was being staged as political theatre, with candidates brandishing it to quell a really particular anxiousness.

The anxiousness had been created by Mamata Banerjee herself. At a rally in Basirhat’s Swarupnagar, she tore into what she known as the BJP’s fish “lies”, saying Bengal “eats up what it produces,” and questioned the saffron social gathering’s silence on the “concentrating on of meat and fish retailers” if it was such a giant fan of the aquatic vertebrate. “Of their states, they won’t will let you eat fish, meat and eggs. Who’re they to determine what individuals will eat?” she thundered. She additionally reminded the viewers of how “persons are tortured and lynched in BJP-governed states for talking in Bengali.”The BJP scrambled to reply by itself phrases. BJP MP Anurag Thakur participated in a public present of consuming fish throughout a ballot marketing campaign. Seen consuming fish and meat with social gathering employees at an area lodge in Kolkata, he stated: “The BJP has Chief Ministers in 16 states. There, individuals can eat no matter they need and so they can observe whichever faith they need. We don’t wish to impose restrictions on meals or faith.” He then accused Banerjee of spreading misinformation to malign his social gathering’s picture.From PM Modi to Amit Shah, the fish debate reached the marketing campaign speeches of even the highest brass of the BJP as they tried to shed their “outsider” and “vegetarian” picture in Bengal. The marketing campaign had decreased, at one degree, to a contest over who might extra convincingly declare the fitting to a plate of hilsa.

Triangular tussle in God’s personal nation

Kerala has had a easy political rule since 1982: Left wins, Left loses. Congress wins, Congress loses. Swap. Repeat. Pinarayi Vijayan broke it in 2021 by successful two phrases in a row. In 2026, he was going for 3 — one thing no Kerala authorities has ever completed.That was one story. The larger story on the marketing campaign path was the BJP. For the primary time within the state’s political historical past, a robust three-way contest was seen in almost each constituency. In contrast to earlier elections, the place the LDF and UDF usually benefited from tacit cross-voting to maintain the BJP at bay, each fronts this time discovered themselves underneath real strain from the NDA.The closing days of the marketing campaign have been marked by controversy on all sides. In Palakkad, BJP employees have been allegedly caught distributing money, with movies circulating broadly. The Congress, in the meantime, confronted allegations over the misuse of funds collected for housing landslide victims in Wayanad. Each tales unfold quick. Each have been loudly denied.What additionally stood out was the spectacle of two nationwide INDIA bloc companions spending a lot of the marketing campaign attacking one another somewhat than the BJP. Every alliance accused the opposite of colluding with the BJP and compromising Kerala’s secular custom.The marketing campaign interval was additionally unusually short- simply three weeks. Regardless of that, Prime Minister Modi, house minister Amit Shah, and Rahul Gandhi all visited the state a number of instances. Everybody needed Kerala. Everybody handled it prefer it might truly change arms.