New Delhi: The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) central office in the Capital remained silent on Friday as the vote count in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections showed the saffron party's dismal performance in the state.
Most BJP bigwigs were busy elsewhere justifying BJP’s loss in UP, saying that voters were essentially looking for an alternative to the Samajwadi Party, which they did not find in BJP and chose to pick BSP instead.
"The people identified the BSP as an alternative to the Mulayam Singh Yadav government. We also projected ourselves as an alternative but we were very late in doing so," senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj said.
BJP’s Hindutva card seemed to have failed in comparison to BSP chief Mayawati's pre-poll strategy aimed at gathering the support of both low and upper castes.
Nevertheless, BJP did make an unprecedented rise in Punjab, where it was able to win back its core urban Hindu vote-block.
"Voters found the BJP as an alternative to the Congress in Punjab, Uttrakhand and in Delhi (municipal elections) and elected it to power there. This did not happen in Uttar Pradesh," party spokesman Prakash Javadekar said.
In the thick of the campaign, its top leaders had their energy directed at striking a reconciliation with rebel MP Yogi Adityanath, whose revolt over ticket distribution exposed chinks in the party and threatened to split saffron votes, specially in the Gorakhpur region.
Senior BJP leader M Venkaiah Naidu, who was in charge of the BJP's election campaign in Uttar Pradesh, was able to broker peace with the Yogi after Advani's intervention.
But soon thereafter, the party's state unit fell to another crisis with the release of an anti-Muslim CD, in turn providing its rivals the perfect opportunity to launch an attack against it.
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