The BJP faced its third and biggest electoral jolt after the Narendra Modi government came to power. Less than four months after sweeping Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan in Lok Sabha polls, the BJP lost 14 of its 24 seats in assembly by-polls in the three states.
The party won only two of the 11 seats which went to polls in UP with the Samajwadi Party (SP) capturing nine, lost three of the four to Congress in Rajasthan and three of the nine to Congress in Gujarat. In UP, the BJP had held ten of the 11 seats, while in Gujarat and Rajasthan it had won all the seats in the Lok Sabha polls. The Lok Sabha by-polls were on expected lines, with BJP winning Vadodara vacated by Modi, SP retaining Mulayam SIngh Yadav's Mainpuri and TRS holding on its leader Chandrasekhar Rao's Medak seat.
Reeling under the verdict of the 32 by-polls across nine states, just ahead of assembly polls in Maharashtra and Haryana, BJP leaders admit that it called for introspection and a message for cadres not to be complacent. This is the third by-polls after the Narendra Modi government came to power when the BJP has faced debacles.
There is apprehension in the BJP that the strategy of its UP hardliners like Yogi Adityananth and Sakshi Maharaj may have backfired. The party leadership seemed to have given a free hand to the UP leaders who harped on "love jihad", a strategy that could lead to polarisation. Even Rohaniya, which falls in Varanasi, the Prime Minister's seat, and where he held a massive rally ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, was wrested by SP. Faced with a humiliating defeat in the general elections, the ruling SP had taken an aggressive approach in the by-polls.
While "love jihad", choice of candidates and a sense of complacency seem to have upset the BJP's by-poll calculations, for the record, the BJP is blaming the results across states on "local factors" saying by-polls were not a referendum on state or central governments.
Analysts attributed the slip in the BJP's fortunes after 100 days of its coming to power to local factors and the hype created by Modi in the Lok Sabha elections that he could not live up to. He promised to immediately contain prices but adopted UPA government's methods that had failed to deliver. The results have emboldened the Congress to declare the "end of the Modi wave" exuding confidence that it will impact assembly polls.
The results come at a time when BJP, confident that the "Modi wave" will cast a spell in assembly elections, is flexing muscle with the Shiv Sena over the seat-sharing arrangement in Maharashtra. However, BJP claims its losses in by-polls will not cast a shadow on its bargaining power. "Every state has its own story. The Maharastrha assembly polls will take place under the Modi wave," said Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, BJP vice-president who is from the state.
Amidst the disappointments, West Bengal has given the saffron party some reason to celebrate with the party winning Basirhat Dakshin, making its way into the state assembly for the first time. Amit Shah had visited the state ahead of the polls.
For Shah, who had drafted the UP strategy in the Lok Sabha polls with meticulous precision taking the party's score to an unexpected 72 of the 80 seats cutting across caste barriers, the by-poll result was bound to be disconcerting. Mayawati's BSP did not fight the polls, leaving the arena for the BJP and SP to fight it out and unlike during the Lok Sabha polls when the BJP weaned away a her dalit vote, this time it got divided.
"The BSP supported independents. Some places the SP got their votes and in other places it got divided," said BJP's UP chief Laxmikant Bajpayi.
The SP and Congress said the people have rejected the politics of polarisation. "People did not like the attitude of BJP and Modi government. While the Prime Minister himself kept silent, BJP leaders and ministers in the Modi government played the politics of polarisation through their statements," Congress spokesperson Shakeel Ahmed said.
Uttar Pradesh's chief minister Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party said in a televised interview that the people had "defeated those forces that are trying to divide our society."
Congress leader Ahmed said the party had made noted gains in Gujarat and Rajasthan, where it had drawn a blank in both states.
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