Mint Quick Edit | Big shifts in power raise a big question: Will investment patterns change?

The Trinamool Congress, which was ousted from power in polls held under the shadow of a controversy over an electoral-roll revision, had for 15 years looked like a stable inheritor of the Marxist regime that ruled the state for the previous 34 years.

Unable to differentiate itself from the leftist formation it had replaced, it could not withstand a robust BJP campaign. That Assam would go the BJP way was expected all along.

The other big political shift was in south India, where Tamil Nadu saw film actor Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam displace the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam as the state’s single-largest party. Since Vijay’s party professes a lighter variant of the same political ideology, this state’s transformation might be less momentous in policy terms than Bengal’s.

Kerala saw its usual back-and-forth pattern play out, this time with a Congress-led alliance defeating a Communist-led one, broadly reversing the previous poll result. The only Union territory that went to the polls, Puducherry, saw a BJP ally win.

India’s ruling party clearly has much to celebrate. For corporate India, the two big state-level power shifts raise two big questions. One, whether West Bengal will finally see a turnaround in its economic fortunes now that the rightist BJP is in charge. And two, whether Tamil Nadu will retain its allure as a destination for industrial investment.