Election results bring more pain than cheer for BJP

Anil Narendra

Assembly elections in all the five States have brought more pain than cheer for the Bharatiya Janata Party. The reason for cheer is the result of Goa Assembly, where BJP and Goa Gomantak Party combined has secured clear majority. BJP, for the first time has claimed majority on its own in this State with beautiful beaches. The real hero of this BJP victory is the former Chief Minister, Parrikar. He was leading the BJP election campaign in the State. I think that securing power with the support of minority is the biggest achievement of BJP. Goa Christians have proved that BJP is not a pariah. The party has won eight seats out of 17 from Christian majority areas. BJP itself fielded 6 Christian candidates and supported two independent candidates and all the eight won. The Party has received the biggest shock in UP. The election results in Uttar Pradesh have proved to be a big blow to Party's hopes of forming RJD government at the Centre in 2014. BJP was viewing its performance in UP Assembly elections as a cornerstone for its success in 2014 General Elections, but the Assembly results have dashed its hopes and it is now more concerned about the 2014 scenario. Once again, the UP is following the path shown by Tamil Nadu, where national parties have almost taken to backstage and their role has become almost irrelevant. In UP elections considered to be election touchstone for BJP and the RSS, all their experiments, on one hand, have been shattered one by one and on the other, a number of their warriors have been grounded. RSS and the Party President Nitin Gadakari had jointly taken up the challenging task of consoling the dissatisfied voters. First, Gadakari, with the support of the RSS, propped up the former RSS Pracharak and former Organiser, Sanjay Joshi in the UP elections, in spite of strong objections from the high-statured leader and Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi. Secondly, in spite of stiff opposition from all party leaders, Gadakari admitted the ousted BSP leaders Babu Singh Kushwaha and Badshah Singh in the Party. In view of increasing opposition, he suspended the membership of Babu Singh Kushwaha, but not only kept the other corrupt leader, Badshah Singh in the Party, but made him party candidate from the Mahoba seat. Except Uma Bharati, all the BJP experiments with Bundelkhand proved unsuccessful. He restricted firebrand leaders like Varun Gandhi and Yogi Adityanath to their constituencies to stop the polarization of Muslim votes, and no effort was made to placate Narendra Modi considered to the face of Hinduism, who was invited to join the BJP election campaign, but who was not happy with the situation. In spite of all efforts, Party not only failed to stop the polarization of Muslim votes, but instead it lost its traditional voters, resulting in its failure to re-enact the 2007 performance, but its performance this time was miserably poor. This is the first occasion after the demolition of disputed structure in Ayodhya on 6^th December 1992 that the BJP candidate Lallu Singh lost to Tej Narayan Pandey alias Pawan Pandey of SP. Lallu Singh has been winning this seat since 1991. Candidates for UP were also decided by RSS, Gadkari and Joshi. They fielded such weak candidates, who not only brought disgrace to the Party, but it was ousted from the race and was relegated to the fourth place and most of its candidates were unable to save their deposits. One hundred twenty two such candidates were defeated who failed to secure their place even in the four-cornered fight. The BJP President Nitin Gadakari had made comprehensive preparations to effect change in UP. He did several new experiments instead of sticking to the traditional attitude and not only this, Gadakari & Co conducted a separate survey for selection of best candidates. In the situation emerging after the elections, it came fourth with 122 candidates and most of them had to fight to save their deposit. There were a number of candidates, who were struggling hard even to get 5,000 votes. In UP, the BJP has been put on margin and responsibility for such a debacle rests on RSS and leaders like Nitin Gadakari and Sanjay Joshi.