The BJP currently controls a dozen of India’s 28 states, with alliance partners in several others
But it has never won power in West Bengal, once a communist bastion for more than three decades
Updated 27 March 2021
March 27, 2021 06:58
KOLKATA, India: Voting began in Assam and West Bengal on Saturday in state elections that will show how support for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is holding up following a coronavirus-stricken year, and months of protests by farmers against his agricultural reforms.
Re-elected for a second five-year term in 2019, Modi’s grip on power is under no threat, but the elections in the two eastern states are the first since the farmers launched protests that have been mainly in the north, around the capital Delhi.