BJP pays price for agrarian distress, employment crisis
NEWDELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is disappointed with Tuesday’s results to elections in five states but it hasn’t lost hope.
The party’s disappointment stems from the fact that it has lost three chief ministerial chairs to rival Congress. It is for the first time after Narendra Modi’s coronation as Prime Minister in 2014 that Congress has snatched a state – three in this case – from the BJP.
But the party remains hopeful of a better show in the general elections next year when people vote to decide whether Modi remains Prime Minister or not. Assembly elections, party strategists insist, have different dynamics and are fought mostly on local issues.
The strategists admit they failed to anticipate the impact of Congress’s farm loan waiver promise in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. “The Congress managed to sway the rural population,” a senior BJP leader in Delhi said on the condition of anonymity.
“It had a huge impact in Chhattisgarh. Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan were impacted, too.”
In Madhya Pradesh, unrest among upper castes over chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s strong pro-reservation line, a tussle in the aftermath of the Supreme Court judgment diluting the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, and the killing of protesting farmers in police firing had an impact on the voters, according to election strategists.