BJP plays down losses, vows course correction

It's not agrarian distress or the farm crisis that led to the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) defeats in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, but "fatigue factors" caused by anti-incumbency, say party leaders, talking following a close study of the party's performance in the Assembly elections in these states.

"Agrarian distress couldn't have been the reason. Why then would our voteshare be only 0.5 per cent less than the Congress," asked BJP general secretary P Muralidhar Rao, who is also the party's in-charge for Rajasthan. Rao admitted that anti-incumbency had some impact on the poll results.

He emphasised that there wasn't any farm distress in Madhya Pradesh or Chhattisgarh either. "After 15 years, some fatigue factors set in," he said.

BJP Vice President and party's Madhya Pradesh in-charge Vinay Sahasrabuddhe rejected talks that the defeat was devastating to the party. "It's not as bad as it's being projected. But in elections, it's not the voteshare but the number of seats that ultimately matter. We have accepted the reality," he said.

He added that the Congress wouldn't be able to provide a stable government in the state either. "They have made populist promises, and will get a taste of their governance, for which they aren't known," he said.

Speaking of Telangana, where the party couldn't make any impact, Rao, who originally hails from the southern state, said, "We expected to win 8-10 seats in Telangana. But Congress created an anti-Telangana divide by bringing in Chandrababu Naidu to campaign aggressively. There was polarisation, and some of our voters voted in favour of the TRS."