New Delhi/Lucknow: Knives are out in the BJP following the party’s defeat by the united Opposition in the bypolls held recently.
The margin of bypoll losses shows that the Opposition has managed to transfer its votes to the joint candidate.
If the party faces defeat in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, the saffron spin doctors feel that BJP may “have to bank on Hindu consolidation” to return to power. In MP and Rajasthan, there are a significant number of Dalits and OBCs.
Minister Prakash Javadekar also said that those looking at bypoll results as an expression of public opinion on Modi government’s performance are wrong.
The Chief Minister, it was learnt, had a review meeting with state leaders, who were given the charge of Kairana and Noorpur bypolls.
With the Jats, who had strongly backed the BJP in 2014 and then last year’s Assembly polls, tilting towards the RLD’s Muslim candidate, who got the backing of her numerically strong community in the region, saffron poll managers, are being forced to once again rework of their caste calculations.
However, BJP poll managers still believe the opposition unity would not be able to make much impact in 2019 when every strategy by the joint opposition will fail in front of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
