The poll verdicts from West Bengal and Assam in the east of the country to Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry in the south have been nothing short of dramatic and historic.

The Mamata wave swept the 34-year reign of the Left Front in West Bengal while Jayalalithaa led AIADMK alliance gave a merciless drubbing to Karunanidhi’s DMK and the Congress combine.

The Trinamool Congress under an unrelenting and undaunted Mamata Banerjee made the apparently invincible CPI(M)-led Left Front eat humble pie. The TMC-Congress combine won 220 of the 294 seats.

It was Banerjee’s long and lonely road to the top, where she opposed the well-entrenched Marxists for almost two decades, going through dark periods of defeat and despair, before she could stand on the victory stand.

The spectrum allocation issue involving DMK’s A Raja and party chief M Karunanidhi’s daughter and Rajya Sabha member Kanimozhi in Tamil Nadu was the most important factor in the DMK’s electoral disaster and it has sent a chilling tremor down the spine of politicians everywhere in the country.

There were intensely fought bruising battles, riveting local rivalries, burning local issues, fierce personality clashes. But behind the clang and clamour of the bruising battle was the real message: the people of this country are positive however negative politics may be and they make the best of what is on offer. Of the five states, only in Assam has the ruling party, the Congress, been re-elected. In the other four, the ruling parties have been the door.

In Kerala, the Congress-led UDF managed a narrow victory, getting 72 over the CPI(M)-led LDF’s 68. In TN and Bengal, the ruling coalition suffered humiliating defeats because of the overwhelming margins of victory.

Jayalalithaa returned as the CM for the third time after 2001 and 1991. The AIADMK has won 196 of the 234 seats. Outgoing octogenarian chief ministers, M Karunanidhi of the DMK in Tamil Nadu and CPI(M)’s VS A[no swearing please]anandan in Kerala have walked into the political sunset with the dignity of warriors who have done what was expected of them — to put up a stiff resistance. Karunanidhi’s sardonic response to the DMK’s electoral disaster was: “People wanted me to retire”.