BJP, which has been on a winning spree in successive polls and seemed to be in a perennial glee, barring one or two occasions, on Tuesday received a shock treatment in its Assembly poll defeats at the hands of its arch rival and claimant to the power at the Centre.
The excessive centralisation of decision making power in few hands, dependence on robotic social media or even much touted 'Panna Pramukh model' had apparently created a disconnect with the real issues that mattered most to the voting masses.
Though the mandate in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan is anti-BJP, it is certainly not pro-Congress either as is evident in the nail bite finish in the poll outcomes of these two States. Chhattisgarh, though, sprang a surprise giving a sweeping verdict in favour of the Congress and would require a detailed analysis of the poll results at a mircro-level.
Despite the 15-year-long incumbency of the BJP rule in Madhya Pradesh, the party had retained its turf in the urban centres even as it freely slipped in the rural areas and gave advantage Congress which otherwise did not seem to be capitalising on BJP's Governance 'failures'. Not recognising farmers' march to Delhi as a 'real one' was part of one of the problems that BJP created for itself that recoiled on the party.
Rajasthan, which is traditionally known for not returning any party twice to power, did not give astounding welcome to the Congress which barely made it to the power in the state which was otherwise headed by a not so popular Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje. The infighting within the State BJP and differences between Party President Amit Shah and Raje also did not help Congress cause a steep increase its tally in the state.
This, however, is not consolation for the BJP which has lost its core Hindi-heartland, particularly Madhya Pradesh, where it had the support base of 20 to 25 per cent even in the days of its earlier avtar Bhartiya Jan Sangh since its foundation in 1951. MP was lost despite it being the earliest and the biggest RSS laboratory for the saffron politics.
The setbacks for the BJP augur ill for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. In 2014, BJP had won of 62 of 65 Lok Sabha seats of these three States. And it is calculated that given the Assembly segments won by the Congress (roughly five segments constitute a LS constituency) in three States, BJP could lose a good 31 seats in the LS poll in 2019.
BJP's central leadership would have to collectively mull as why there a trust deficit had suddenly crept and started growing between the voters and Prime Minister Narendra Modi who was a consistent vote catcher for the party in most of the Assembly polls before the charisma started losing its gloss with the Gujarat and Karnataka polls. Elections in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan were fought with the regional satraps leading from the front despite the incumbency sword. Would the same incumbency rub Modi wrong way?