With JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar forming a government with the NDA in Bihar today, the BJP and its allies now rule over 70 per cent of the country's population, marking an unprecedented saffron footprint.
What's more, the BJP overwhelmingly dominates the major states in the country, as its alliance is in power in seven of the 12 states which send 20 or more MPs to the Lok Sabha.
As the BJP expands, the Congress has shrunk significantly in the last few years. The 130-year-old party now rules only in one big state, Karnataka, where the BJP under B S Yeddurappa is working overtime to upstage it in the 2018 Assembly polls.
The mission to rule from Kamrup to Kutch and Kashmir to Kanyakumari has long been a war cry for the BJP, which has been adding to its ever-swelling kitty of NDA-ruled states in the last few years.
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Kerala and West Bengal are the only major states where the saffron tint is still to strengthen.
Senior BJP leaders believe that the return of Kumar, identified with good governance and probity, to its fold has severely dented the opposition's attempts at forging a united front against the NDA.
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