Five years on, Puducherry set to test ‘double engine’ model as NDA seeks second term

Puducherry's upcoming elections test the NDA's governance model amid opposition rifts and promises of stability and welfare delivery.

Puducherry, which saw its first-ever AINRC-BJP Government installed in 2021, gets its earliest opportunity to deliver a verdict on five years of the much-touted “double-engine” governance model when the Union Territory goes to the polls on April 9, 2026, to elect the 16th Legislative Assembly.

The All India N.R. Congress (AINRC), led by four-time Chief Minister N. Rangasamy, leads the headcount in the 15th Legislative Assembly with 10 MLAs, while its ally, the BJP, has six. The DMK, the principal Opposition, has six, the Congress two and Independents six.

The run-up to the election can turn out to be a tame affair in comparison to the tumultuous phase that preceded the previous Assembly elections. There was a long-drawn stand-off between former Chief Minister V. Narayanasamy and then Lieutenant Governor Kiran Bedi over governance rights. His headline-hogging dharna in front of the Raj Nivas over Ms. Bedi’s “authoritarian and obstructionist” ways, and election-eve defections, eventually precipitated the collapse of the Congress Government on February 22, 2021, barely weeks before completing its term.

The AINRC-BJP front, in spite of signs of a rift over policy matters and portfolio allocation, has been cultivating a perception of stable governance—Mr. Rangasamy has especially attacked the confrontationist style of his predecessor, which he believes precipitated a governance crisis and development stalemate.

The counterview in the Opposition camp is that such a claim obscures the cause and only projects the effects of systematically impeding the functioning of an elected government that had begun its 2016-21 term with a comfortable majority of 15 Congress members and two DMK MLAs.

The bottom line of the 2021 verdict, though, was that Congress, which strutted about the political landscape of Puducherry as a dominant force for decades, failed to make a convincing case before the electorate and ended up with a record low tally of just two seats.