A day after the BJP lost the Assembly election in Bihar, the party’s Parliamentary Board held a meeting here on Monday, to assess the reasons.
The meeting concluded that the Grand Alliance or the Mahagathbandhan had won because there had been almost total transfer of votes among various parties in the alliance, and that this arithmetic had overwhelmed the BJP and its alliance partners.
Union Minister for Finance Arun Jaitley said there was no question of removing Amit Shah as BJP president after the debacle, “as the party has otherwise done well in different States.” The meeting, attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is a member of the board, and Mr. Shah, was preceded by a meeting between Mr. Shah and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat.
By evening, despite MP Hukum Deo Narayan Yadav’s statement that Mr. Bhagwat’s call for a review of the system of reservation was responsible for the defeat, the party decided that caste arithmetic did it in.
“In the 2014 general election, the three partners in the Grand Alliance had fought separately. In the Lok Sabha polls, we found that our polling percentage was 38.8% while the various constituents of the Grand Alliance had got 45.3% but separately. We felt that maybe, when coalitions happen, partners cannot transfer their votes totally to each other. So, we thought that combined with the Prime Minister’s appeal, the three of them would not be able to beat us. We were proved wrong,” said Mr. Jaitley.
“We have won elections under Mr. Shah’s leadership in Haryana, Maharashtra, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, and established our presence in Kerala,” he said, ruling out his removal.
He also dismissed suggestions that Mr. Bhagwat’s remarks had done the damage. “The BJP had already clarified that it was in favour of the reservation policy as it exists, therefore, there is no question that Mr. Bhagwat’s remarks were responsible for our loss,” Mr. Jaitley said.
Mr. Jaitley said the party would be asking for reports from various district units in Bihar and go into the details of the debacle in the next few weeks. Sources in the party said that as of now, “no drastic change has been envisaged as a corrective.”
Sinha calls on Nitish
Meanwhile BJP MP from Bihar and former film star Shatrughan Sinha continued to openly defy the party and called on Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar at his residence in Patna to congratulate him. “He has won a major victory and I know him from before,” the actor-MP also known as Bihari babu said as he left Mr. Kumar’s residence.
Mr. Sinha had through the course of the election continued to openly express support for Mr. Kumar. Senior party leaders, incensed by this and other provocations came out with vituperative statements against Mr. Sinha. Union Minister for Water Resources Uma Bharti said that Mr. Sinha was part of a “conspiracy against the BJP and the NDA government” while BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya said, “when a vehicle is on the move, dogs run by its side thinking that the vehicle is in motion due to them” to describe Mr. Sinha’s actions.
Another general secretary Muralidhar Rao has already asked that disciplinary action be taken against Mr. Sinha and Ara MP R.K. Singh for openly speaking against the party during the Bihar poll. Sources indicate that action may be initiated against the duo.
