For the first time in the country, there is going to be no Opposition party in an Assembly, leave alone having a leader of Opposition (loP)! The 2015 Delhi Assembly elections has been a catastrophic one for the BJP, so much so that it was not only decimated to the single digit number “3”, but also saw its own chief ministerial candidate Kiran Bedi lose from the party’s “never-failing” seat of Krishna Nagar.
The dismal performance pushed BJP into an introspective mode on Tuesday, but it is fairly clear that internal sabotage in the party’s Delhi unit was the primary reason for the outcome. Despite the Central leadership completely taking over poll preparations, which only widened the disconnect with its State cadre, all strategies chalked out by them recoiled resulting in a landslide win for the fledgling Aam Aadmi Party. With initial trends indicating a lead for the BJP on Tuesday morning, party workers seemed quite confident, although cautiously. However, by 10 am as the AAP took off in a massive surge, the numbers in its party office at Pt Pant Marg began to dwindle almost in proportion to the poll results.
Union Ministers like Arun Jaitley, Nirmala Sitharaman, Piyush Goyal and other leaders like Ram lal and Prabhat Jha who until the polling day had made their base in the State office were nowhere to be seen. When asked about the leaders, a senior member of the party said, “It is Amit Shah’s son’s wedding on Tuesday. So, most of them have gone to Ahmedabad.” Sitharaman who was the media in-charge for the polls was seen inspecting a multi-level shopping complex at Moreh in Manipur. Delhi BJP chief Satish Upadhyay was the lone person in the office who later in the day offered his resignation taking responsibility for the defeat.
Delhiites gave a clear mandate to the AAP which pocketed 67 seats putting an end to the BJP’s winning streak while giving a pause to the “Modi wave” in just a span of nine months. The only three BJP candidates who survived the AAP tsunami were Jagdish Pradhan (Mustafabad), Vijender Gupta (Rohini) and Om Prakash Sharma (Vishwas Nagar). All except OP Sharma, who won by 10,000 votes, won by a minor margin of five to 6,000 votes.
A flashback of the party’s mood and activities brings one to realise that the BJP was plagued with extensive interference by Central leaders, MPs and leaders who were not from Delhi clearly couldn’t coordinate well with the workers at the ground level. Projecting former IPS officer Kiran Bedi as its face and “importing” candidates while not giving tickets to locals cost the party dearly. The verdict has made as many as 13 Purvanchali winners and the BJP had just fielded three candidates from the community, while the AAP had fielded 13 of them.
With the crushing defeat came a simmering grudge among the party leadership. A number of Delhi BJP leaders said the neglect of local leaders prompted many to carry out anti-party activities which further weakened the party candidates. Not ruling out the possibility of internal sabotage for the party’s defeat, Delhi BJP president Satish Upadhyay said, “The results are indeed shocking. There must be numerous reasons of defeat. These (charges of sabotage) can be a part of it. The BJP will introspect and take the corrective measures.”
Upadhyay’s own team along with him is also being seen as a factor responsible for party’s poor performance. So much was the dissatisfaction among workers that even national President Amit Shah’s tried-and-tested formula of panna pramukhs also failed to bear any fruit. As against their claim of 1.5 lakh panna pramukhs, the party could actually make only 87,000 of them. Around 12 days ahead of polls, the BJP appointed 14 Union Ministers, national office bearers and 120 MPs from various states to take charge of electioneering in Delhi. Disgruntled local leaders now complain that most of their time went only in holding, meetings with these “big leaders”.
“Most of the party workers were engaged with never-ending party meetings. Apart from the Union Ministers, seven MPs from Delhi looked after the campaign schedule while MPs and MlAs from other States too held frequent meetings with workers at district and constituency level. This left little time to carry out door-to-door campaign,” said a Delhi BJP leader.