YEARENDER 2014 - The year the BJP came of age

The country's political map is being painted saffron and if the BJP under Amit Shah continues its march, it will annihilate the little challenge still posed by the Congress. 2014 appears to be the year of the BJP.  * The massive victory in the Lok Sabha elections again proved that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's prominence was unassailable.    * The BJP has won almost every Assembly elections after it lost power in Karnataka in May 2013. There has been no looking back for the party since then as it has formed governments in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in the first round of Assembly polls ahead of the general elections in May 2014. The party, however, could not form the government in Delhi despite being the single largest party.   * The BJP added Maharashtra and Haryana in its kitty after the Lok Sabha polls. Jharkhand will become the latest state to get a BJP chief minister.   * The decisive verdict in Jharkhand and impressive gains in Jammu and Kashmir have strengthened the national character of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which now has a firm grip on the country's polity, effectively toppling the Congress as the leading political force.   * The BJP will now have eight chief ministers from Haryana to Maharashtra, capturing the vast expanses of northern, central and western India. It has allies ruling in Punjab and Andhra Pradesh.   * The BJP's next battleground will be Delhi and Bihar where elections are due. The party is likely to face a tough challenge from the Janata Parivar in Bihar, but the party hopes that Modi's charisma will work in the state as well to demolish the challenge posed by Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad. In Delhi, the saffron party is confident of countering the threat posed by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).   * BJP is making impressive gains in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu too. In Andrha Pradesh, several key Congress leaders are making a beeline to the BJP.