India, May 15 -- It is useful to begin this column by highlighting a commonality between the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) chief ministers in Assam, Bihar and West Bengal. Combined, these states have almost as many Lok Sabha seats as the Congress has today. Himanta Biswa Sarma was a senior leader of the Congress party in Assam before he joined the BJP. Suvendu Adhikari was a Trinamool Congress leader in West Bengal and his father was a Congress-man before he joined TMC and then the BJP. Samrat Chaudhury and his father started and succeeded in politics in the Mandal parties. All of these defections to the BJP happened after 2014, once the party proved its national dominance and did enough to suggest that it could win these states.

These ...