The BJP, which won Palghar lok Sabha seat in Maharashtra but lost three other bypoll contests on Thursday stands with 273 numbers in the lower House.
The number of 273 which gives the party a simple majority in the lok Sabha is nine down from 282 seats the BJP had won in 2014 General Elections.
Though BJP by itself still crosses the halfway 272 mark and has comfortable majority with the help of its 12 allies, the slide in the numbers does not miss out on the message of a certain anti-incumbency factor setting in last four-years.
If BJP aspires to move up several notches above 272 mark in 2019 lok Sabha polls, it would need to drastically re-work its homework in the electorally key State of Uttar Pradesh where SP-BSP Chemistry seem to be doing the right arithmetic in three laboratories of their combined experiments — Gorakhpur, Phulpur and Kairana — where BJP lost with good and glaring margins.
The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) had wrested power from the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) with 336 seats in 2014, of which the BJP alone had then share of 282 seats.
Series of reverses in bypolls including Gorkhpur and Phulpur in March and Kairana (all in UP) and Bhandara-Gondiya in Maharashtra on Thursday reduced BJP’s numbers in the lower house to 273, excluding the Speaker.
While BJP retained seats in the earlier bypolls in Vadodara in Gujarat, Shahdol in MP and lakhimpur in Assam, it lost its sitting seats in Beed in MP (to Congress), Gurdaspur in Punjab (to Congress) Alwar and Ajmeer in Rajasthan (to Congress).
The resignations of BJP MPs BS Yeddyurappa and B Sreeramaulu as MPs following elections to the Karnataka Assembly also brought a further dip in party’s strength in the lower house.
The BJP with its NDA allies - Shiv Sena, JD(U), Apna Dal, lJP, SAD, RlSP, PDP, PMK, SWP, NPP and AINR Congress — still hovers around 314 in lS.
The Telugu Desam Party (TDP), a staunch NDA ally for four-years, had quit BJP’s company in march taking away 16 of its MPs, citing the Modi-Government’s failure to deliver the promised financial package to Andhra Pradesh . BJP is also struggling hard to smoothen its ties with its largest and the longest ally Shiv Sena (18 MPs) which has, for long, not lost any opportunity to attack the BJP, for one valid or for no apparent reason.
Besides, TDP’s exit, the NDA counting also went down as one of its allies also lost lok Sabha seat in a bypoll .
While BJP ally PDP lost its sitting seat of Srinagar in the bypoll to NC, another bypoll is not being held for almost two years since CM Mehbooba Mufti quit her lS seat Anantnag. BJP ally and Meghalaya CM Cornard Sangma is scheduled to resign his lok Sabha seat.
Three successive losses of lok Sabha seats, particularly the home seats of UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath (Gorakhpur) and that of Deputy-Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya (Phulpur) and on Thursday that of Kairana against a combine Opposition of RlD-BSP-SP could be worrisome for the BJP which has 73 lS MPs from the State.
Uninterrupted successes of the BJP in Assembly polls- Assam, Manipur, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Tripura — has also witnessed a break in Karnataka despite break-neck campaigning by the Prime Minister and the BJP Chief himself.