The results of the by-elections to three Assembly constituencies, in which the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party won only one seat, have jolted its prominent leaders, especially as elections to village panchayats and the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike are scheduled next year.
While party leaders see this as a clear message that the State unit cannot depend on the Narendra Modi factor alone, there are worries over the slender margin of victory that the party registered in the Shikaripur seat.
Former Chief Minister and newly appointed national vice-president of the BJP, B.S. Yeddyurappa’s son B.Y. Raghavendra won by just over 6,000 votes in Shikaripur. Mr. Yeddyurappa had won by a margin of over 3.5 lakh votes from the Shimoga Parliamentary constituency in the Lok Sabha polls.
A disappointed Mr. Yeddyurappa told reporters: “The party will introspect on the results.”
The BJP had faced a disastrous performance in the Assembly polls in 2013, following infighting and corruption charges and scams involving its leaders.
However, the party managed to do well in the Lok Sabha polls in May, when Narendra Modi became a singular focus for the campaign.
The Lok Sabha victory had made the State leadership confident and party insiders feel that many leaders had become complacent and assumed that “past mistakes” had been wiped out. Sources in the party added that “the by-poll results must be seen as a wake-up call”.
In Bellary where the party lost by a huge margin, the BJP had depended heavily on the clout of B. Sriramulu, who won the Bellary Lok Sabha constituency in 2014.
The defeat has now raised serious questions about the BJP’s strength in the region. The party’s performance and hold in this region had considerably weakened after the arrest of former Minister G. Janardhana Reddy in the illegal mining scam.
While the party was aware that the Congress had a formidable presence in the Chikkodi-Sadalga seat, there was a section in the leadership which hoped for a better result.
The BJP is now set to hold an important meeting of its highest decision making body — the State core committee — in Bangalore on September 1, to analyse the by-poll results.