BJP board backs Amit Shah; rivals willing to wound but afraid to strike

Jaitley said the Congress, JD(U) and RJD contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections as rivals but had cumulatively secured more votes than the NDA

At a time when the party is gripped with unease about its future in the forthcoming electoral bouts and its middle rung is lashing out at the top leadership, the Bharatiya Janata Party Parliamentary Board, the party's topmost decision-making body, met on Monday to review its rout in Bihar Assembly polls. The board backed party president Amit Shah and owned "collective responsibility" for the defeat.

Senior BJP leader and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley pointed at the series of assembly and civic poll triumphs under Shah's leadership since August 2014 to reject any possibility of fixing accountability on him. Jaitley also dismissed that Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat's comment calling for a review of caste based reservations led to the electoral loss. "I do not agree with that analysis," Jaitley said, adding that a solitary statement doesn't lead to victory or defeat.

The board attributed the defeat to Opposition unity, to the better strike rate as well as more effective vote transfer of the NDA's rival alliance, the mahagathbandhan. Jaitley said the Congress, Janata Dal (United) and Rashtriya Janata Dal contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections as rivals but had cumulatively secured more votes than the NDA. The finance minister said the BJP didn't expect these parties would be able to transfer their votes to each other as seamlessly as they did and that caste was a big factor.

In the Lok Sabha elections, NDA had received 38.8 per cent votes while all the three Grand Alliance parties, which had fought the poll separately in 2014, had received 45.3 per cent of votes, he said. In the assembly polls, NDA got 34.1 per cent and the mahagathbandhan 41.9, he said, noting that the vote difference between the two rival alliances remained more or less the same.

He also pointed to a substantial share of votes going to Independents and smaller parties as another reason for the defeat. "The size of their social arithmetic became more than ours," Jaitley said. He said the issue of disciplinary action against errant party members like Shatrughan Sinha and R K Singh was "not discussed" at the meeting, but advised party leaders to exercise restraint in their public statements.

Jaitley defended the decision to not project a CM candidate. He said the party had "good strategic reasons not to do so". But disquiet is evident within the middle rungs of the party as well as RSS. The Sangh is miffed at party MPs criticising Bhagwat. RSS leadership is likely to take up the issue of lack of communication between top party leaders and its middle rung.