As many as three top Opposition politicians - Sharad Pawar, Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal - hailed the BJP’s defeat in Jharkhand as a rejection of the Citizenship Amendment Act. Many have also called the widespread protests against the Act as the “beginning of the end of Narendra Modi”.

But is this actually the case?

For a moment, let us set aside the discussion on the merits or de-merits of the Act and look, empirically, at one question: Who gains from the entire CAA-NRC row – the Narendra Modi government or the Opposition?

Let’s break this down into different components. First, the Jharkhand results.