BJP's possible loss in Delhi to pose fresh challenges for the party in Bihar & Bengal polls

NEW DELHI: If Delhi has overwhelmingly voted for AAP, as the exit polls predict, the results pose fresh challenges for the party that is gearing up to wrest Bihar and Bengal in the coming months. BJP had assembled its entire might behind its Delhi campaign with the prime minister himself attending four rallies.

Nearly 84,000 RSS and BJP cadre were deployed on ground to take the party message door-to-door. But what worked for the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls and in states such as Maharashtra, J&K, Jharkhand and Haryana did not show their expected magic, if the exit polls are true.

Senior Sangh ideologue KN Govindacharya feels that for dealing with a state like Bihar the BJP will have to change its image and policies. “The party has to develop an image of being pre-poor. Its policies of late have contradicted that, which will affect its chances in a poor state like Bihar. If it really wants to appeal to the people there, it has to change its land-acquisition policies and show itself as pro-farmer.”

The Delhi elections reflect the need for parties to understand the local needs of people and not vague promises, Govindacharya added. “In Bihar, BJP will have to address the problems of migration. Their social engineering methods have to be in interest of the people there, to win their trust. Their methods of relying on booth management or one person’s charisma will not work.”

A senior BJP leader said the impact of Delhi results has been on the minds of the BJP top rung leaders for months now which also reflected in the increase in the number of ministers in the revamped Cabinet. “Winning in Delhi was important because Bihar is next, this was told to workers in all meetings. It was precisely why the party brought in leaders such as Yogi Adityanath in the last moment to campaign in areas such as Badarpur and Tughlaghabad that have a significant population from Bihar,” a party leader said.

The jury is still out on if Bihar polls will be pre-poned from December considering the volatile political situation in Patna, but BJP will have a lot of overhauling to do. To start with, it has to address the question of whether to revert to the earlier strategy of going to polls without a CM candidate or try again the Delhi experiment of naming one. And it’s just not the BJP who would be learning the lessons from Delhi. JD (U) leader Nitish Kumar had already pitched in for AAP last week.