Who has MLAs? BJP's gains directly proportional to Congress loss in a decade 

India Today's Data Intelligence Unit (DIU) analysis shows that the strength of Congress has been declining since 2012, with the losses of the Grand Old Party being directly proportional to the gains made by the BJP.

Back in 2012, of the 1,105 MLAs in the whole of north India, a little over 20 per cent belonged to the Bharatiya Janata Party. Twenty years later, in 2022, nearly every second MLA in the region belongs to the BJP now.

India Today's Data Intelligence Unit (DIU) analysed data of elected MLAs in the last decade. We did not include the results of bypolls. Below are the three key takeaways:

In March 2012, the Congress party had 1,224 MLAs while the BJP had 845. The Congress then was the dominant player. The BJP has become a much bigger player a decade down the road, relegating the Congress to a distant second. In March 2022, the number of Congress MLAs has come down to 719, while the BJP's number has grown to 1,385 out of the 4,120 MLAs in India.

The north has been one region where the BJP has gone from strength to strength in the last decade, peaking with nearly 60 per cent seats in 2017 and dropping marginally to 47 per cent of the seats in 2022.

We included Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand for this analysis in the North.

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Uttar Pradesh has been like a fortress where the BJP has won four elections on the trot — two Lok Sabha and two assemblies — with an impressive vote share over 40 per cent. For a state that is known to have constantly shifting political choices, the BJP's recent performances have been quite impressive.