Demands have begun surfacing in the Bharatiya Janata Party for a serious introspection and course correction exercise after the party’s rout in the Delhi Assembly election. The leadership is under pressure to institutionalise changes in functioning, and the BJP-led government, too, expects a bumpy budget session of Parliament, a cross-section of leaders told The Hindu .
Sources said the party could carry out an organisational reshuffle by the end of this month and replace the general secretaries and other office-bearers who joined the Narendra Modi government in the last expansion of the ministry in November 2014. Party president Amit Shah had put the appointments on hold, with the party focussing on its membership drive that began in December, a spokesperson said.
Another leader, however, said the “casual approach to filling vacant positions underlines the party president’s style of micromanaging everything, and centralised decision-making.” That style was now being blamed as one of the reasons for the debacle, he said.
On Tuesday night, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed the debacle with his Cabinet colleagues from the BJP, a senior minister is learnt to have pointed out that the party’s strategy was defective and needed to be analysed.
“The budget session will get derailed. The Delhi loss is a great morale booster for the Opposition,” another senior leader said.
Senior leader from Bihar Kirti Azad said “heads should roll,” while a top Delhi unit leader, who was among those upstaged by Kiran Bedi’s last moment entry into the party, said: “These last-minute decisions did affect our fighting capabilities. Everything was delayed, from decisions to ticket to the slogans.” The Delhi unit is planning to demand that the party’s Parliamentary Board “sit down and seriously discuss the reasons for the loss,” he said.
Party leaders are also worried about the impact of the results on the Bihar Assembly polls due later this year. A senior leader from Bihar said the Delhi loss would provide “anti-BJP forces a rallying point.”
Party spokesperson and psephologist G.V.L. Narasimha Rao dismissed the suggestion that the Delhi poll outcome was an anti-BJP verdict. “It was in the AAP’s favour and not against the BJP.”
