New Delhi, September 14
Victory for the BJP in seven of the 12 seats of various state assemblies, results for which were declared today, has come as the much needed morale booster as the party had been passing through one of the lowest patches in its 29-year history.
And once again, credit for injecting some hope and promise into the BJP goes to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, under whose leadership the party won five of the seven Gujarat Assembly seats. Six of these were earlier held by the Congress.
Of the six constituencies, the Congress lost the Jasdan seat in Rajkot for the first time after Independence. For this (Jasdan) reason, BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad said the win was doubly significant for the party.
BJP’s performance in two other states ruled by the party - Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand - was also quite comforting.
In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP wrested one Assembly seat from the Congress while the latter barely retained one of the total two seats that went to polls in this round.
The BJP also retained the lone Vikasnagar Assembly seat that went to polls in Uttarakhand. The party was naturally eager to interpret the win as a “stamp of approval of its good governance”, a slogan which LK Advani raised in the General Election but which failed to click then. Buffeted by criticism from all directions after the General Election defeat, the BJP looks at these results as a harbinger of the good days.
On its part, the Congress has dismissed the BJP’s win as a “temporary victory”. Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said, “One set of positive results should not be considered as conclusive. A set of byelections is not indicative of any trends. Time is running out on Modi government and the BJP. Events have come a full circle and Modi government will soon be out.”
But Prasad unwittingly let out the secret that the appearance of Ahmedabad metropolitan magistrate SP Tamang’s report charging Modi government with killing Ishrat Jehan
and three others in cold-blooded fake encounters on June 15, 2004, actually gave the BJP and Modi an issue they were desperately looking for and the Congress criticism of Modi on this issue only helped Modi further in turning the focus on his persona, making it Modi versus the others and enabling the BJP to score an impressive victory yet again.
In the long run, therefore, especially when the party is looking for a credible leader to take over nationally, these elections have thrown up Modi’s way a good opportunity to take over the reins of a despairing, demoralised
BJP.
