A day after the Bharatiya Janata Party suffered reverses in by-elections across nine States, party leaders maintained that a “shrill” campaign, overconfidence of local leaders and cadre complacency in Uttar Pradesh contributed to the party’s poor showing in the State.
The party’s “love jihad” campaign resulted in “reversed polarisation” in favour of the Samajwadi Party that won eight of the 11 seats in the by-polls. The absence of Bahujan Samaj Party also helped the Samajwadi Party consolidate minority votes.
The party did not receive ground support from RSS workers as it had during the Lok Sabha elections, and this is also cited as a reason for the party’s below par performance. Questions are being raised on lack of projection of a State leadership as well as on the selection of candidates which had become a highly centralised process.
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In Gujarat, the leaders said, the BJP performance had peaked during the Lok Sabha elections because the State wanted to see Narendra Modi as Prime Minister. In the by-polls, the party retained six of the nine seats but party functionaries do not find this unusual. “The by-polls have brought in normal results. No party can win 100 per cent seats,” a party office-bearer said on condition of anonymity.
However, the party needed to analyse the reasons for its reverses in Rajasthan where just four months ago it had made a clean sweep of the Lok Sabha polls and before that won two-thirds majority in the Assembly elections.
Meanwhile, the national spokespersons met Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and reviewed the party’s response to various issues including by-poll results.
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