BJP sets up panel to analyse electoral debacle

With its strength reduced from 138 seats in the Lok Sabha in 2004 to 116 this time, BJP on Saturday decided to set up a committee to analyse the debacle.

>With its strength reduced from 138 seats in the Lok Sabha in 2004 to 116 this time, BJP on Saturday decided to set up a committee to analyse the debacle.

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The Committee will visit all states to study the party's performance and analyse the reasons for its poor show in many of them.

"A committee constituted by BJP president Rajnath Singh will study and analyse these things at the central level. The committee will visit different states," BJP spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy told reporters here.

However, the party did not reveal the names of members on probe panel.

The decision to set up the committee was taken on the first day of the party's two-day national executive meeting.

Rudy said senior party leader Arun Shourie said at the meeting that the committee's findings should be made public and the party should build a "mechanism of accountability".

Asked about Jaswant Singh, the spokesperson quoted the senior leader as saying that the 2009 polls could be his last election. He, however, said that it did not mean that Singh would quit the party

Rudy also said Shourie "fully endorsed" the decision to form the committee and also demanded action should also be taken against persons held responsible by the committee.

He said Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi told the meeting that he was satisfied with the party's performance in his state where the party won 15 of the 26 Lok Sabha seats.

Former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Sundar Lal Patwa sought to dismiss Jaswant Singh's statement that it could be his last election and said the party would decide who will contest when and from where.

There was no talk about the BJP severing its links with the RSS at the meeting, he said and added that the issue of the hate speech of Varun Gandhi did not come up. Shourie in his intervention also said that Yashwant Sinha and Jaswant Singh are very respectable leaders of the party and the party should take care of them.