BJP to set up panel to analyse poll debacle

Sensing an impending storm at its crucial meeting on June 20 to discuss its poor show in the recent Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has decided to set up an in-house committee to analyse the reasons for its electoral defeat.

The decision to set up the committee is expected to be finalsed at the party’s “core committee” meeting here tomorrow. Besides party President Rajnath Singh and Opposition leader L K Advani, senior leaders like Jaswant Singh, Venkaiah Naidu, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and Bal Apte will attend the meeting.

The move comes in the wake of a controversial write-up by Sudheendra Kulkarni, a close aide of Advani, about the reasons for the BJP’s poll debacle. Kulkarni, who otherwise does not hold a formal position in the BJP, has cited the failure of second-rung leaders in backing Advani as a strong leader and naming Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as an alternative in the middle of electioneering as reasons for the party’s defeat.

Though the BJP has distanced itself from Kulkarni’s opinion, his remarks have fuelled the simmering anger in the party over the silence of leaders including that of Advani, the party’s prime ministerial candidate in the elections, on the defeat. Sources in the BJP said Rajnath Singh and Advani had decided to address this anger by setting up the committee, a move which had been ruled out earlier.

Highly placed sources said ginger groups within the party had already been discussing crucial issues like Advani’s silence after the polls at closed door meetings. A member of the BJP’s national executive, who took part at such meetings, told Business Standard “While we know that Advaniji withdraws himself into a shell after a crisis, party men all over the country needed to hear from him after our unexpected defeat.”

The national executive meeting is expected to be stormy, which would see leaders from all over talking about crucial issues like the party’s Hindutva image, Muslim bashing by some of its leaders in the elections. among others.