BJP: What went wrong

As for Rajasthan, it was lost from day one, two other BJP leaders said, attributing this to the unpopularity of chief minister Vasundhara Raje.

It was for the first time in a long time that the Centre and the states (Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan) were aligned, said Neelanjan Sircar, senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, but voters felt not much had been done on the development front. “The BJP surely was without an excuse. We saw frustration among farmers during the Gujarat assembly election, which has now spread to non-farming communities and urban areas as well. This can directly be attributed to the BJP’S performance on economic matters,” he said.

The BJP sensed trouble in Chhattisgarh closer to polling dates when farmers did not turn up to sell paddy at government counters, but didn’t expect to be swept away in the state, the first BJP leader said.

In hindsight, the strategists admit, the party could have selected better candidates in the state. “There was a definite fatigue about the BJP government and legislators in Chhattisgarh,” a fourth BJP leader said, asking not to be identified.

In Chhattisgarh, the strategists said, the BJP was convinced the alliance between Ajit Jogi and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) would eat into the Congress’s vote share. In fact, the alliance ate into its own share.

In Rajasthan, the disconnect between Raje and other party leaders began shortly after her government was sworn in, but things came to a head only after the BJP lost the by-election to two parliamentary and one assembly constituency earlier this year.

“It was only after the loss that alarm bells started ringing in the party headquarters in Delhi. Before that, nobody was even listening to the complaints of the party’s elected representatives,” a Lok Sabha MP from Rajasthan said on the condition of anonymity.

The strategists said a few months after the bypoll, the party went in a tug-of-war between Raje and the party’s national president, Amit Shah,