The repercussions for the ruling party could be significant, given that it is dependent on coalition partners in the federal government to stay in power.

“Coalition partners will seek to consolidate their leverage over the BJP, but it will all depend on how the BJP performs in the state elections,” said Sandeep Shastri, national coordinator of Lok Niti Network, which studies elections.

The BJP is heavily dependent on two regional parties – Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party and Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal United, for its third term.

The BJP has sought to demonstrate that its power and influence in decision-making remains as strong as before by appointing members of its party to key cabinet posts.

But there are signs that the Modi government’s absolute authority is eroding.

The federal government recently scrapped a controversial proposal to directly appoint bureaucrats to key positions, dubbed as lateral entry, said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, an independent political commentator.

Traditionally, senior civil servants have to, after years of diligent service, advance to the upper echelons of governance after being selected for national exams and rigorous training, after which they are assigned to various administrative positions.

Earlier this month, the government also referred a proposed amendment to the Waqf boards – a statutory body that oversees an Islamic endowment of property to be held in trust and used for a charitable or religious purpose – to a parliamentary panel after it criticised by the opposition Congress party as anti-Muslim.

The party’s concern about the coming polls is evident since voting will not be held all at once, giving Modi, the star campaigner, more time to personally visit each state, Mulkhopadhyay said.

“It defies logic to not have elections in all the four states together,” he said, highlighting that Modi’s government had floated a proposal to hold federal and state elections simultaneously late last year when the BJP appeared poised to consolidate its voter base.

Modi’s BJP has also reclaimed support from the right-wing Hindu organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), reflecting the party’s unease, Mukhopadhyay said, pointing out that former BJP President J.P. Nadda had said the party had become capable of looking after its own needs before losing the federal majority.

The RSS, a cultural and social organisation which has been a mentor to senior BJP leaders, has one of the most extensive networks of cadres in the country. Ram Madhav, a senior RSS functionary has, along with a BJP leader, been appointed to oversee the election campaign in Kashmir, he added.

“The BJP’s competence has been badly exposed. It requires the larger political fraternity of the Sangh Parivar or the Hindu nationalist clan, comprising 40–50 organisations in virtually every sector,” Mukhopadhyay said.

“The BJP has once again turned to RSS, and it shows Modi on his own cannot secure victory,” he added.

State polls will be held for the first time since the decision to scrap the constitution’s Article 370, which earlier gave the province significant autonomy.

03:40

The Kashmir conflict

The Kashmir conflict

Resurgent Opposition

The BJP is unlikely to get any seats in the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley, but hopes to muster enough votes from the Hindu-dominated Jammu area, which could enable it to become a part of a coalition government in the state, Mukhopadhyay said.

A spate of militant attacks in recent months in Jammu by separatist groups, who appear to have shifted their focus from the Kashmir valley because of heavy army presence, could also weigh on BJP’s performance even in the Hindu-dominant region, he added.

The BJP will look to bounce back in the northern state of Haryana. In 2019, it swept all 10 parliamentary seats, only to cede half of them to the opposition Congress in the most recent national elections.

Analysts say the outlook for India’s ruling federal party also appears dim in the western state of Maharashtra, a key battleground that has seen political upheaval following a split in the ranks of two major regional parties, Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress party, in the last couple of years.

A faction led by Uddhav Thackeray and veteran politician Sharad Pawar looks set to consolidate significant gains made in the national elections. A BJP alliance won only 17 of the 48 parliamentary seats this year in the state, losing as many as 24 since the last elections in 2019.

The BJP is only expected to win comfortably in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, analysts say.

Yashwant Deshmukh, a political commentator, says Modi’s popularity helped the BJP win not only the federal elections but also state elections earlier. In many of the states, local issues are likely to be as important if not more than the prime minister’s connection with voters in the coming elections, he said.

A primary reason for the BJP’s losses in parliamentary elections in key regions boiled down to the poor selection of candidates, some of whom had little or no experience in the areas they were campaigning, he added.

After the national elections, “the opposition will certainly be more aggressive,” he said.

However, BJP’s decline can be attributed more to the improved performance of regional parties aligned with the main opposition Congress Party, such as the Samajwadi party in Uttar Pradesh state rather than any marked improvement in the performance of Congress, he said.

The gap between the Congress and the BJP in vote share remains roughly two-to-one at the national level, in favour of the BJP. The BJP could stage a comeback in different parts of the country if the party identified the right candidates and campaigned earnestly, he said.