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Narendra Modi, Amit Sha\'s triumphal march comes a cropper across the broom

As an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) victory rally shouting "Paanch Saal Kejriwal" (Kejriwal for five years) passed by, stunned BJP workers peeped out of the gates of the party headquarters. It was after a long time that there was a sombre silence inside the BJP office on a day when election results had been announced.

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As an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) victory rally shouting "Paanch Saal Kejriwal" (Kejriwal for five years) passed by, stunned BJP workers peeped out of the gates of the party headquarters. It was after a long time that there was a sombre silence inside the BJP office on a day when election results had been announced.

Just eight months after the BJP swept Delhi in Lok Sabha elections, it was decimated to just three out of the 70 seats in the assembly elections, interrupting the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah juggernaut and shattering the perception that it was invincible.

This was the first time ever since the Modi government came to power in May, 2014, that the BJP has faced defeat. "It's an erosion of Modi's popularity and rejection of him and his politics. He was too much of a dream-seller who was making promises and not delivering. He has lost the battle of perception. This also shows that Amit Shah's strategy has been over-hyped and without Modi, his strategy falls flat," said Nilanjan Mukhopadhya, who has written a book on Modi.

For the BJP, whose chief ministerial candidate Kiran Bedi herself lost by around 2,000 votes in the party stronghold of Krishnanagar, the Delhi verdict would have to be kept in mind when it scripts its strategy in future elections, particularly Bihar. The BJP may now tread cautiously in Bihar after the Delhi vote, seen as a reflection of the people's wariness over the arrogance, unfulfilled promises and negative campaign of a party which led the government at the centre.

In a battle between an underdog and the powerful, the BJP's Delhi strategy seems to have backfired. The BJP had fought an aggressive campaign, putting senior union ministers in the forefront, trying to capitalise on the AWAM allegations on AAP's funding, an ad campaign and bringing in an outsider, Kiran Bedi, as the chief ministerial candidate.

With the anti-BJP vote consolidating in favour of the AAP, the verdict cut across caste, social and ideological barriers. BJP leaders argued that the party, which got 32.2 per cent votes (28,91,129) had lost only one per cent of its committed vote. In Delhi during the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had captured 46 per cent votes. But BJP acknowledged that the party will have to introspect about why it could not go beyond its committed vote share.

The faction-ridden Delhi unit could not hide its disillusionment with the party leadership, blaming its strategy of bringing an "outsider" and ignoring the local cadre in formulating strategy for the defeat. "The state unit was not kept in the loop and was asked to lie low. It was people from outside who held fort in Delhi," a state BJP leader said. According to the leader, if the BJP had gone without a chief ministerial candidate, it would have scored better.

That the party sidelined senior Delhi leaders Jagdish Mukhi, Harsh Vardhan and Vijay Goel did not go down well with the Punjabi and trader communities. On the other hand, the BJP brought in turncoats like Krishna Tirath from the Congress and Shazia Ilmi, a former AAP leader. The last-minute support extended by the Dera Saccha Sauda angered the sikhs.

Unlike the 2014 Lok Sabha election, when the BJP fought on the development plank, the party did not have a clear vision or message for Delhi. Instead the BJP pitched its campaign on targeting AAP. Party leaders dubbed Arvind Kejriwal Naxal, bhagora and thief.

The Purvanchali voters also showed their disappointment with the party, which had put up just three candidates from the community against 13 from the AAP.

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