Almost a month after it lost elections in Punjab, the State unit of the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) on Sunday shifted the burden of defeat to its former MP Navjot Singh Sidhu, among other things.
Putting their heads together to examine the factors that led to party’s debacle in recently concluded polls in the State, the soldiers of the saffron brigade that fought 2017 polls listed strong anti-incumbency and strong social media support to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) among other reasons.
Besides, the party’s inefficiency to put forth various welfare schemes of the State Government as well as the Centre to the local public also emerged out to be another major reason, other than some of the local and region specific issues.
As many as BJP’s 20 contested candidates, out of 23, attended the meeting which was chaired by the state organisational secretary Dinesh Kumar mainly to analyse the reasons of their defeat besides the expenditure incurred during the elections.
During the discussion, the exit of BJP’s former MP from Amritsar Sidhu was considered to be a major factor affecting its poll prospects in the State.
Interestingly, the BJP State unit, during the run up to polls, has all along been emphasising that Sidhu’s exit would not have any impact on the party.
Sidhu, who was nominated as Rajya Sabha member by the BJP, had quit the Parliament’s membership in July last year, followed by resignation from the party ahead of Punjab polls.
The cricketer-turned-politician flirted with AAP and also the Congress, and in fact, floated his own non-political forum along with Olympian Pargat Singh and Bains Brothers of ludhiana, before finally siding with the grand old party.
Sidhu’s eleventh hour decision to join Congress gave its campaign a much needed push, and steered party to victory under the leadership of Capt Amarinder Singh after a decade long political exile.
Sidhu, who has been elevated to be the Cabinet Minister, is the number three in the Amarinder Government.
The BJP, which contested 23 seats in alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal, could manage to win just three seats — in one of its worst ever performance in the State.
The party members believed that strong anti-incumbency factor against the ruling combine, not only in the State but also at the national level, worked against it. The age-old alliance had succeeded in defying the anti-incumbency wave in 2012, while forming the Government in Punjab for the second consecutive terms.
Finishing at the poor third spot along with its ally SAD, the BJP also pointed AAP to be a major factor resulting in its defeat. The AAP, in its first State elections in Punjab, secured distant second position with 22 seats, after Congress which formed the Government with 77 seats.
The saffron party maintained that the debutant party got a massive support on the social media, including Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, among others, that worked in its favour. “The AAP mainly ran its campaign through social media…Their campaign was totally against the ruling combine that cost us dear…despite every possible effort, we could not built up a strong social media cell,” a senior BJP leader told The Pioneer.
“The SAD-BJP combine has worked a lot in the State…it carried out major developmental activities in its 10-year-long tenure but our failure was in not propagating the same among the masses,” stated the leader.
The leader said that other than that, the NDA government at the Centre has also done a lot for Punjab, besides coming up with various welfare schemes. “Our inefficiency was in not taking the same to the people,” he added.