Should’ve banked on Modi wave, BJP feels in review meeting

Lack of an incumbent elected government in Delhi and developmental work coming to a halt under the President’s rule have been identified as some of the reasons by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for its humiliating defeat by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

Lack of an incumbent elected government in Delhi and developmental work coming to a halt under the President’s rule have been identified as some of the reasons by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for its humiliating defeat by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

A review meeting was held at the Pandit Pant Marg office on Friday. Senior party leaders said since the President’s rule was in force for the past eight months with a BJP government at the Centre, people viewed it as the BJP’s failure.

“Not much work was carried out under the President’s rule and this impacted us negatively. At the same time, the Lt governor reports to the Centre and hence, it was seen as a failure of the BJP government,” said a senior BJP leader.

According to sources, senior BJP leader gave demolition of slum clusters at Rangpuri Pahari by the Delhi government as an example where AAP workers were able to take advantage of the situation, showcasing it as a failure of the Lt governor and the BJP. Even circle rates were increased by the Lt governor which affected buyer and sellers.

Sources in the BJP further said that a strong Lt governor in Delhi would have helped the party perform much better. Sources further said that delaying the declaration of the names of candidates and unable to motivate the grassroots workers also affected the overall campaigning of the party.

In a meeting called by the Delhi BJP to assess what went wrong in their two-hour long meeting, a number of BJP leaders also stated that negative campaigning was not taken too kindly by Delhi voters.

Not only this, there were also a number of leaders who felt that the party should have banked only on brand Modi rather than the last minute announcement of Kiran Bedi as the chief ministerial candidate.

Asked about Bedi’s absence from the meeting, the BJP leader said that all state party office bearers had been called to the meeting and, since Bedi was not one, she had not been invited to attend it. The leader also said that the party has asked all its district teams to prepare a report highlighting reasons behind the debacle.