BJP grassroot workers hope the Delhi loss will teach a lesson to Modi, Shah

“The BJP needed to be defeated this time. It’s good that it has happened. It is time the BJP leadership, both in government and in the party, realised its follies and took corrective measures,” said a middle-ranking RSS member to Firstpost. He, of course, did not expect (or even wish for) the defeat to be so humiliating for the BJP. He said people had been turning to AAP day-after-day, including some who had earlier turned to him, for sundry favours or guidance. This leader is no fringe element of the Sangh Parivar. He is known for clarity of thought and the work that he does for the Sangh’s ideological expansion. [caption id=“attachment_2093889” align=“alignleft” width=“380” class=" “]  Representational image. AFP[/caption] Nor is he the only one who made this resentful remark during the course of the election and after the results were declared. Many people, from Union ministers down to senior leaders from both centre and states, intermediate-level leaders and foot soldiers were simply unconvinced about what Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, the party’s two supreme leaders, were telling them about the Delhi elections. The BJP’s strike rate in Delhi hit rock-bottom (a four percent success rate, with just three wins out of 70 seats) and is indicative of the turnaround from the 100 percent strike rate achieved during the Lok Sabha polls, when the party won all seven seats. The party failed to convince voters of the merits of its political position. From the perspective of Modi and Shah, the problem is serious as they simply failed to get their own party workers excited about Delhi. Clearly, the top of the party was not in sync with the average worker, either in thought process or action. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s famed credentials as a backroom campaign strategist is also being questioned, even mocked, by a section of party workers. These murmurs are surfacing even as the BJP more or less maintained its December 2013 assembly poll vote share. This failed to benefit the party due to the near doubling of the AAP vote share from 29 percent to 54 percent. “Overconfidence” is the word most commonly used to explain away defeats when the reason for failure is not so obvious. But in this case party leaders, workers and Sangh sympathisers are using terms like “arrogance” and “smugness” repeatedly. It should worry Modi and Shah. Most of the people who used these words said they were not doing so out of any sense of malice or ill-will towards the Modi-Shah duo. They said the leadership must change its style of functioning and course-correct. Some of the leaders even recalled the bygone era of Vajpayee and Advani, when the duo functioned as a team with a certain degree of humility. Worse, some BJP sympathisers also drew negative comparisons with AAP. “This election presented a unique situation where we picked up all the bad things that were associated with Arvind Kejriwal in December 2013, including running a negative personal campaign,” said one leader. “On the other hand, Kejriwal picked up all the good things that were associated with us, including running a positive campaign. We both learnt a few lessons from each other but he clearly proved to be smarter.” This candid statement reflected a mix of grudging admiration for Kejriwal and a sudden rising unease with his own party leadership. The disquiet in the Delhi BJP, however, did not begin with the recent assembly elections. It had begun even before the parliamentary elections last year, when four outsiders – Manoj Tiwari for Delhi North-East, Mahesh Giri for East Delhi, Meenakshi Lekhi for New Delhi and Udit Raj for Karol Bagh constituency - were imposed on the local unit. But, at that time, this resentment did not surface as party workers focused on bringing Modi to power and did not want to play spoilers. This time, they felt let down as the party again persisted with this strategy. The lateral entry of Kiran Bedi, her anointment as chief ministerial candidate, and also the induction of other party hoppers into the BJP, upset many. Their anger peaked when Bedi, in her introductory meeting, told workers to either listen to her or go out. Her “police”person” style of functioning led to a virtual revolt in Krishna Nagar constituency, where she lost by a margin of over 2,000 votes. The marginalisation of Union Minister Harsh Vardhan, a local who had been winning this constituency since 1993, didn’t go down well with the workers and electorate. After Bedi’s other verbal bloopers, where she said she had not lost, and that it is the party that should introspect, many party leaders are nodding their “”I-told-you-sos”. “A party which used to function as a parivar has unfortunately been stressing individualism and banking too much on Modi’s persona. He cannot put his personal charisma to test every two months, in state after state. Delhi could not take that continued load from the top and results are there for the world to see. I just hope that Modi-Shah get the sense of this verdict in the right spirit,” said a BJP MP.