Bihar was the only big outlier. In a sea of saffron from Jammu and Kashmir to Maharashtra, Gujarat to Jharkhand, Bihar was the only state to resist the spread of the Bharatiya Janata Party. It even managed to deliver a crushing defeat to the BJP, at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Party President Amit Shah were pulling off resounding victories or canny takeovers across the land. That is now in the past. Nitish Kumar’s decision on Wednesday to join hands with the BJP to return as Bihar chief minister, less than 15 hours after stepping down from the same post and ending an anti-BJP alliance, means the saffron party now controls almost the entirety of India’s heartland.

In some ways, this should not be surprising. The BJP’s massive Lok Sabha victory in 2014 suggested the party could expand far beyond its traditional strongholds, on the back of Narendra Modi’s popularity. In the state elections that followed in 2014, it has methodically gone about this task, winning outright in many cases and ensuring it would be in the driver’s seat even without a majority.

The following year, 2015, seemed to halt this expansion, with the BJP being routed by the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi and defeated by a coalition of Opposition parties in Bihar. But the saffron party did not just pick up the pieces and move on, it continued to work on unsettling the governments in those states where it had lost. In Delhi, that meant making it difficult for the AAP government to function. In Bihar, it focused on attacking the weakest links in the Rashtriya Janata Dal-Janata Dal (United) alliance.

Hook or crook

In 2016, the BJP got a breather, since it was not a major player in most of the state elections, although it did manage significant vote-share gains in Kerala and West Bengal. In Assam it managed its very first victory, opening up the North East.

Meanwhile, the party was also hard at work on coming to power without elections. It first tried this gambit in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh, building up support and allegedly using money to attract lawmakers over to the BJP camp. Though both efforts initially seemed successful, they ended up being overturned following Supreme Court scrutiny. But that did not stop the BJP from pushing further. By December 2016, Arunachal had turned saffron and elections in Uttarakhand a few months later led to the same result.

Early elections in 2017 saw the same two-pronged approach. In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP managed a resounding victory, giving it a huge national boost and confirming its position as the pole of Indian politics. But in Goa and Manipur, despite finishing with fewer seats than the Congress, the BJP still cobbled together enough support to form the government in both states.

In Bihar, as with those two states, the government is now primarily run by two parties, neither of which won the most seats in the 2015 election.

This is now the3rd time that BJP has formed a state government after losing an election. Goa, Manipur&Bihar show our democracy in poor light — Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) July 27, 2017

Congress leaders attempted to pass this off as a “failure” of Indian democracy, but whatever the moral dimensions of the move may have been, the BJP’s successful efforts only confirm the impression that it is dominant. All other political parties are forced to react.

Up next

Now that the Hindi heartland has nearly been conquered – a resounding BJP victory in municipal polls in Delhi suggests even AAP is under the gun – the saffron party is looking further afield. It has already pushed its way into several North Eastern states and is continuing to throw its weight, and central funds, around there. North Eastern states have traditionally backed the government at the Centre, so this may not be surprising. The party will spend some of the next few years hoping to ensure it is re-elected, in states like Gujarat, or winning over states like Himachal Pradesh where it seems ready to take over.

The real challenge lies in the south and east

In the crosshairs: