BJP makes history in Assam; TMC, AIADMK retain power

The BJP today made history in Assam by getting its first government in the north east, decimating Congress which was dethroned in Kerala too even as two women Chief Ministers Jayalalithaa and Mamata Banerjee romped home for a second consecutive term in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.
Suffering a rout in the current round of assembly polls, the Congress could take heart only from the fact that it managed to wrest power in Puducherry from its breakaway group AINRC with a simple majority.
The high-stakes elections saw the end of Congress rule in Assam where it had scored a hat-trick last time under Tarun Gogoi.

With Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal as its Chief Ministerial face, the BJP and its allies AGP and Bodo People's Front scored a landslide victory, cornering 86 seats in the 126-member Assembly.
The BJP won 60 seats on its own, up from 5 last time. The AGP bagged 13 seats and was leading in one while the BPF secured 13 seats. Last time, the AGP had 10 and BPF 12.
The Congress, which had 78 seats in the outgoing Assembly, could bag only 26 this time. The AIUDF, led by Badrudin Ajmal, won 13 seats, against 18 which had made it the largest opposition party in the Assembly.

In neighbouring West Bengal, Trinamool Congress headed by Mamata Banerjee secured a two-thirds majority, fighting it alone against the Left-Congress combine.

Bettering its performance over the 2011 elections, Trinamool Congress, which had then contested in alliance with Congress and won 184 seats in the 294-member Assembly, has now ended with 211 seats in its bag.
The Congress improved a bit this time by getting 44 seats against 42 last time.
Its ally CPI(M) registered a big slide as it got only 26 seats against 40 it had last time, while its allies CPI got one, Forward Bloc 2 and RSP 3.

On the same eastern coast, Tamil Nadu defied its 32-year-old tradition and belied several exit poll predictions by handing a handsome victory to the ruling AIADMK led by charismatic Jayalalithaa.
Facing a tough opponent in the DMK-Congress alliance, the AIADMK managed to win 131 seats, 13 more than the halfway mark in the 234-member House. It was leading in 3 more.
Although it got a majority, AIADMK slipped on its past performance of 2011 when it had got 150 seats. However, it is for the first time since 1984 that a ruling party has been voted back to power in the state.