The Delhi poll debacle biting it all over, the BJP on Tuesday was collecting “pieces of omissions, miscalculations and oversight” to attain a complete picture that it could not conjure up ahead of the fiercely-contested elections in the Capital city.
The party could not capture the Delhi poll narrative in a way Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) did with Arvind Kejriwal playing a common man with all his frailties as against its own misplaced “over confidence” that failed to read the pulse of people, resolving to strike a “power balance” in Delhi by according a landslide victory to the latter.
As the BJP reeled under the crushing defeat at the hands of AAP, party leaders independently analysed the verdict with some of them opining that the AAP was successful in communicating the seeming “arrogance” of the BJP to the electorate vis-à-vis their own down-to-earth approach in addressing pubic issues.
BJP leaders were airing their views before Parliamentary Board, the highest decision making body of the party, formally takes stock of the poll defeat in Delhi. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, however, discussed the shock defeat of the party with senior Cabinet Ministers Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley and Nitin Gadkari, during the Cabinet meeting on Tuesday evening.
“It is the perception that matters where the BJP could not outmaneuver Kejriwal’s success in projecting himself as a leader of the aam aadmi, by the aam aadmi and for the aam aadmi...,” said a senior BJP functionary, requesting anonymity, indicating that top leaders could not work out AAP-like connect with people.
They, however, did not agree that the lateral entry of former IPS officer Kiran Bedi and her last minute projection as chief ministerial face proved to be the undoing of the party in Delhi poll. “An almost complete sweep of AAP only goes on to prove that a different face could not have stopped this wave even he or she may have only added few more seats to our tally,” one of the leaders said. “People had made up their mind,” he hasten to add.
In a similar vein, the party seniors rejected the idea that “internal sabotage” was a factor in the crushing poll defeat, saying “verdict is completely one-sided”. The internal survey conducted by the BJP also did not live upto its suggestion that the party would perform credibly. Some described it to "inexperience" of those who conducted the survey. A view was also going round that ‘Rajya Sabha team’ could not carry the day for the BJP.
In the light of the defeat, an year-long indecision on Government formation in Delhi and thereby allowing AAP a period of “rebuilding” at the lowest level in 70 Assembly constituencies also looked to be an incorrect strategy. AAP nurtured constituencies by collecting its “entire workforce of volunteers” (which during the lok Sabha poll spent its energy all over the country) in the national Capital “and got the dividend on Tuesday,” they said.
Though, the BJP put its “all efforts” in the poll campaign but somewhere in the run up faulted by sidelining its “development plank” as it did in the lok Sabha and seemed to have bogged down in “negative electioneering”, allowing AAP to assume “a good man’s facade”, said another party leader citing AAP’s clever ploy to not accept the support from Shahi Imam “taking exception” of him not inviting Modi to his son’s wedding while sending invitation to Pakistan’s premier.