For more than a decade, the BJP under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has built an image of political invincibility. The combination of Mr. Modi’s personal popularity, Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s organisational strategy and the BJP’s formidable electoral machinery has made the party appear almost unbeatable in national politics. Opposition victories were often dismissed as isolated State-specific aberrations rather than indicators of a larger political trend.
Recent developments, however, have begun to cast serious doubts over the BJP’s public support and electoral dominance.
The first indication came from the massive CJP protest at Jantar Mantar, which reportedly witnessed the participation of thousands of youths from across the country. More significant than the size of the mobilisation was its political consequence. For perhaps the first time since assuming office in 2014, the Modi Government was compelled to concede to sustained public pressure, culminating in the resignation of a Union Cabinet Minister widely perceived to be among the closest members of the Modi-Shah inner circle. Whether viewed as political damage control or a response to overwhelming public sentiment, the episode suggested that public mobilisation still possesses the capacity to compel political accountability.
The real test of whether this public sentiment had any electoral resonance came in the first set of Assembly by-elections held after the youth protest and controversies of Ram Mandir donation theft and E20 petrol debate.
The BJP contested three Assembly by-elections in three States where it is itself in power: Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. Political arithmetic strongly favoured the ruling party. Yet the outcome shows different.
Of the three seats, the BJP managed to retain only one and that too in Gujarat, the home State of both Narendra Modi and Amit Shah.
Even that victory carried an unmistakable warning.
In the 2022 Gujarat Assembly election, BJP candidate Yogesh Narandas Patel had won the Manjalpur Assembly constituency by a staggering margin of 1,00,754 votes over the Congress candidate. In the recent by-election, BJP candidate Satish Patel retained the seat by defeating Congress candidate Bhikhabhai Rabari by around 30,000 votes. The BJP may have retained the constituency, but the numbers tell a different story.
The Bankipur Assembly constituency in Bihar, regarded as a BJP bastion for more than 30 years, collapsed in what may be one of the most symbolic defeats suffered by the party in recent years. The constituency had been represented by none other than BJP National President Nitin Nabin, making it one of the party’s most prestigious urban seats.
The timing makes the defeat particularly significant. The by-election came shortly after the BJP installed its own Chief Minister in Bihar. Instead, Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor defeated BJP candidate Neeraj Kumar Sinha by 18,953 votes, making it clear that even the BJP’s safest constituencies are no longer beyond electoral challenge.
The result is likely to carry consequences beyond Bihar, as it provides opposition parties with evidence that the BJP’s organisational dominance can be successfully challenged even in its traditional strongholds.
The setback in Datia, Madhya Pradesh, was equally revealing.
Unlike Bihar, where the contest involved a new political force, Datia appeared to offer the BJP an almost ideal electoral opportunity. The BJP enjoys a commanding majority in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly, while the by-election became necessary after the sitting Congress MLA was disqualified in connection with a bank fraud case. Conventional political wisdom suggested that the ruling party would comfortably wrest the seat from the Opposition.
The electorate thought otherwise.
Congress candidate Ghanshyam Singh defeated BJP candidate Ashutosh Tiwari by 6,053 votes, indicating that organisational strength and governmental advantage do not automatically translate into electoral success.
Viewed individually, each of these contests may be explained by local political dynamics, candidate selection or constituency-specific factors. But taken together, they begin to form a broader political pattern.
The BJP contested three by-elections in States where it enjoys the advantage of incumbency. It lost two seats outright, Bankipur and Datia and retained only one, Manjalpur, with its victory margin shrinking by nearly 70 per cent compared to the previous Assembly election.
Politics is often driven as much by perception as by statistics.
History shows that dominant governments usually experience gradual erosion before suffering decisive reverses. Shrinking victory margins, the loss of symbolic strongholds, successful opposition mobilisation and the growing willingness of voters to challenge established political narratives are often the earliest indicators of such transitions.
Whether these developments eventually mark the beginning of a larger political realignment will become evident only in future elections. Yet the political message emerging from these three by-elections is unmistakable. The aura of invincibility that has surrounded the BJP for over a decade appears to have encountered its first serious electoral test.