Marathon stock-taking over 5-0 poll rout today

Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 12

As din settled around the elections and focus shifted to a resurgent Congress, senior leaders held closed-door meetings to take stock of reasons for the BJP’s biggest setback since Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed power in May 2014.

An office-bearers meeting tomorrow is expected to dissect the humiliating 5-0 loss and it will be interesting to note what the BJP parliamentary meeting has to offer on the happenings.

BJP president Amit Shah will preside over the meeting of national office-bearers, state unit presidents and ‘morcha’ heads which, party leaders assert, was planned much before the results were announced to elicit feedback on organisational matters.

Feedback from senior party leaders suggests a common thread in the analysis of the defeat—that the voting in three states of the Hindi heartland was not in favour of the Congress but was a show of anger by BJP’s core vote base due to leanings “favouring” Dalits and OBCs like “U-turn” on the SC/ST Act. And then the “overkill of the Hindutva plank and giving too much importance to Congress president Rahul Gandhi effectively helped in his build-up,” they add.

Interestingly, despite some provocative remarks by the Congress chief in his victory speech yesterday, BJP’s normally voluble party spokespersons chose to maintain a careful silence.

The BJP’s second-rung leaders also talk of “arrogance in senior leaders” as a cause for disenchantment in the cadres. The party may have lost the three key states, but its vote share did not shift entirely to the Congress. For instance in Madhya Pradesh, its vote share is higher than that of Congress, whereas in Rajasthan it is only marginally less.

Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh perhaps had the most poorly managed organisation units of the Congress, but it still managed to win. While it is easier to blame chief ministers, the central leadership cannot be absolved of its responsibilities, they say. “BJP’s top leadership needs to come down a few notches and seek a helping hand now. If Assembly results are extrapolated on the Lok Sabha canvass, then the BJP stands to lose almost half of the seats it currently holds in the Hindi heartland — Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh and perhaps also Haryana,” they add.