Lack of local leadership hurt BJP in Delhi

Vibha Sharma
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, February 11

Early trends from Delhi reveal that the national capital has sent a message to the BJP over its lack of leadership and grasp over local issues.  

The BJP can no longer rely only on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to win Assembly elections. Delhi has reiterated this firmly after the BJP’s Jharkhand loss and the fact that it barely managed a win in Haryana. 

The BJP needs to also rethink its polarising strategy, as the people have sent the message that they will reward good work irrespective of the religion, caste or creed they may belong. More importantly, what it needs is a strong regional leadership which can connect and take BJP’s narrative to masses. 

Delhi has given a thumbs up to AAPs work, including freebies and work in education and health, and despite BJP’s best efforts to pull them down. A silver lining is that BJP may be down but it has managed to find space, winning more than what several exit polls had predicted. 

The late surge of voting and mobilising of voters in the last leg of voting on Saturday appears to have helped the saffron party substantially. Though BJP has shown recovery and a comeback, eventually the government will be formed by the party which gets more than 35, the halfway mark in the 70-member Assembly.

Delhi is also a verdict on the high-octane campaign Home Minister Amit Shah led from the front for the first time as a union minister and the decision (CAA) he spearheaded as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second-in-command at the Centre in its 2.0 avtaar.  

Shah has been always been a star campaigner of elections he strategised as the BJP president.

However, this is the first time when he, and not Prime Minister Narendra Modi, became the “face” of a campaign the party contested under a new president, JP Nadda. 

While eventually Nadda may be left holding the blame given that he was given the mantle just days before Delhi went to polls. 

For Shah, every election may be a do-or-die and this is how he reacts to any such challenge, as his supporters claim, Delhi was a prestige issue and a 22-year-old jinx for him which he failed to break. 

The fact is today was not just important from the point of view of winning but also a mandate for BJP’s politics and position at the national level. 

BJP’s has maintained that “Hindutva” and Hindus are in danger and only it can save it. 

More importantly, results are bound to be read as the first verdict of the Narendra Modi-led NDA’s controversial decision—amending the Citizenship Act. 

Led by Shah, the party left no stone unturned to impress core voters and attract floating and new voters, using all ammunition in its arsenal, giving the Delhi elections all it had and more. 

For Shah, the chief architect and strategist, whether it was the decision of him campaigning door to door or the party taking it to the Parliament last week, Delhi has delivered a bad blow and a lesson he and Nadda now need to pay heed while designing strategies for West Bengal. 

Whatever happened in the Lok Sabha last week—the government fielding controversial Delhi BJP MP Parvesh Verma to open discussions on the President’s Address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bit-by-bit demolition of anti-CAA protests and union minister Harsh Vardhan’s statement against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi—it was all a part of the strategy to keep issues alive till Saturday when Delhi polled. 

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