Elections in 2025: When the index fingers turned some tables

The electoral victories in the year 2025 turned out to be a prosperous one for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and an year of wait for the Opposition to turn the tables, with a few consolation.

In Delhi, the BJP returned to power after a long 26 years. In Bihar, the BJP, gaining the largest number of seats, powered Nitish Kumar to effortlessly navigate to his tenth term as the Chief Minister.

The Kerala local body election was one among the highly anticipated ones with the State set to face the Assembly polls in 2026. The Congress-led UDF came out in flying colours, outshining the CPI(M)-led LDF, who are in power in the State. The BJP also made a remarkable victory in Kerala as it clinched Thiruvananthapuram corporation, in a never before feat.

India also witnessed a bunch of local polls and bye-elections, some of which yielded unexpected and interesting results and moments.

In 2025, Delhi got its fourth female Chief Minister, Rekha Gupta, after the BJP stopped the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government’s 12-year run, regaining power after 26 years.

The BJP won 48 seats, reducing the AAP to 22 seats. AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal and former Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia lost their seats in the battle, while Congress failed to make it to the Assembly marking a disgraceful hat-trick.

The NDA tasted a huge victory in Bihar, casting away all the anti-incumbency factors. The ruling coalition defeated the RJD-led Mahagatbandan, gaining 202 out of the 243 seats in the Bihar Assembly election.

Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal United (JDU) bagged 85 seats, while the BJP won the highest among the NDA allies, 89 seats. Union Minister Chirag Paswan’s LJP (RV) contributed 19 of the 29 seats it had contested to the winning chunk.

Even though the RJD had the highest vote share among the parties, this 23% of the total polled votes translated to just 25 seats. Congress’ poor performance continued in Bihar, with the party winning just six seats.

Neither Rahul Gandhi’s Vote Adhikar Yatra and campaign against SIR exercise, nor his vote theft allegations succeeded in fetching enough votes.

According to the voter turnout data released by the Election Commission of India (ECI), 2.51 crore women voted in this election. According to an article by The Hindu, Chief Minister Kumar’s Mahila Rojgar Yojana, which gave ₹10,000 to 1.25 crore women, seems to have played a huge role in presenting his tenth opportunity to Mr. Kumar as the Chief Minister.

With Kerala gearing up to vote in the assembly elections in 2026, the local body elections in 2025 was seen as a semi final ahead of the final bout. The State awarded the Opposition alliance —UDF — a splendid victory, with the bloc utilising almost every factor of anti-incumbency, giving a blow to the LDF that has been in power in the Assembly for the last two terms.

The LDF, which had won five out of six corporations in 2020, was reduced to just one this time. The UDF won four, and the BJP-led NDA opened its account by winning one, which is Thiruvananthapuram.

The UDF has dominated the election across panchayats, municipalities, and Corporations, winning 8,021 grama panchayat wards, 1,241 block panchayat wards, 196 district panchayat wards, 1,458 municipal wards, and 187 Corporation wards.

The LDF faced huge setbacks as the UDF captured many local bodies that had been ruled by the former for decades. Kollam Corporation is an example where the LDF has been the inevitable power for 25 years, even since the Corporation was formed in 2000.

The Bodoland People’s Front (BPF) swept the elections to Assam’s Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC), winning 28 out of 40 autonomous council seats to throw the BJP and the United People’s Party Liberal (UPPL) out of power.

In 2020, the BPF emerged as the single-largest party with 17 seats but the UPPL and the BJP, which won 12 and nine seats, formed the government with the help of the Gana Suraksha Party, which added a crucial one seat to the alliance.

The ruling Mahayuti alliance won 207 municipal councils and nagar panchayat seats out of the 288 that went for polls in 2025. The BJP won most of them, winning 117 seats, while the Shiv Sena and the NCP attained 53 and 37 seats, respectively. The Mahavikas Agadi (MVA) won just 44 constituencies. The remaining went to candidates from lesser-known parties and independents.

Former Minister Pramod Jain snatched the Anta Assembly seat in Rajasthan’s Baran district from the BJP when the seat became vacant after the disqualification of BJP’s Kanwar Lal Meena.

DMK’s V.C. Chandhirakumar registered a landslide victory in the Erode East Assembly seat of Tamil Nadu as the seat went vacant after the death of Congress’ E. V. K. S. Elangovan.

The Nilambur bypoll in Kerala happened when the sitting MLA P. V. Anvar, who was backed by the LDF, resigned after a lot of political turmoil. Congress’s Aryadan Shoukath delivered a powerful victory, outshining LDF’s M. Swaraj by a significant margin of 11,077 votes

2025 was also the year of local polls in States like Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Uttarakhand.