RESULTS from 33 Assembly constituencies in nine states demonstrate that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is not as invincible as one would have thought. Uttar Pradesh where Yogi Adityanath, the new Mohant of Gorakshpeeth, led the BJP campaign in the bye-polls did not succeed as the party lost in 11 Assembly seats in the state. Evidently development in Delhi and ‘Love Jihad’ need to be given a hard look. The BJP should put its extreme right-wingers in the shade. Emphasis should be given to Narendra Modi’s old slogan of ‘sabke saath, sabke vikas’ . The slogan paid the BJP rich dividends in the Lok Sabha elections, not Hindutva. Even in Rajasthan and Gujarat where the BJP had been sweeping the polls, the Congress has won some unexpected victories. It bagged three out of four seats in Rajasthan where the Congress had been virtually wiped out in the Parliamentary elections. In Gujarat, the BJP won only six out of nine seats which it had held earlier.
However, the BJP can congratulate itself on its success in West Bengal. It was almost a non-party in the state, having won the last Assembly seat in 1999. It has registered a victory over the Trinamul Congress in South Basirhat despite its having a large Muslim population. The BJP had won two Lok Sabha seats in the parliamentary poll in West Bengal. South Basirhat is significant dimming the screen glamour of Trinamul’s Nayana Banerjee who won in the Chowringhee constituency. The stigma of the Saradha scam has begun to stick. On the whole, the BJP’s relative failure may be ascribed to its inability to contain inflation. Good governance is the need of the hour. Hindutva has lost much of its spell.
