Delhi elections -- a lesson for BJP

Bringing in Kiran Bedi seems to have backfired, and getting star MPs to campaign just hasn't worked

The way the party is going about fighting the Delhi elections shows that all is not well within the BJP. All talk about Amit Shah being the wizard of electioneering is turing into a myth. It is time BJP takes stock of the ground situation and initiates corrective action.

BJP is a party in a mess. The handling of the entire campaign for the Delhi assembly elections is proof that Amit Shah and company need help. After sweeping the Lok Sabha polls and specially the performance in states like Uttar Pradesh, it was felt that Amit Shah, Narendra Modi combine has magical skills when it comes to fighting elections. The unfolding events in Delhi, it seems, are hinting that the past was just a freak incident.

Para-dropping Kiran Bedi, considered as a master stroke, has actually backfired. The reasons for bringing Bedi in are not known. It is an open secret that the Delhi unit of the party was beset with infighting for various reasons and choosing the chief ministerial candidate from among them would have made matters worse. So the best way to unite the party was to bring in a rank outsider as a leader. There is no doubt that this has united the Delhi chapter of the party but only to defeat the imposed leader. Even otherwise, for a party like BJP to bring in a leader from outside does not throw good light on the internal party leadership pool. And that too in a state like Delhi where most of the BJP stalwarts belong. Again, if one goes by the past public utterances of Kiran Bedi the impression emerges that she is more confident about what is wrong with BJP and Narendra Modi than what is right.

Getting a 120-130 MPs including some high profile ministers to campaign for the 70 assembly seats shows how shallow the Delhi unit of the BJP is.  And quite a few of the MPs do not even know the topography of Delhi, leave alone the problems. Star appeal could have been a possible reason, but in reality it isn't. These MPs have nothing positive to talk about and have been speaking negative about the other parties infray. I am amazed as to how a political party can think of this as a grand plan. To me it seems more like a desperate last minute measure because the action plan put in place was not delivering the results. Another example of things not being right in the party.

The way the campaign is being rolled out at the ground level exhibits an extremely unprofessional attitude. First it was a negative campaign against Arvind Kejriwal then a decision was taken that BJP will turn positive. But the very next day officially endorsed negative campaign was back. The party is absolutely confused. And then came the monumental blunder of Kejriwal -- rozana paanch sawaal (daily five questions to Kejriwal). In two days time this also fizzled out, BJP ran out of questions, and thank god for that else the questions would have come to the level of which brand of mufflers does Keriwal use? etc. etc. Even otherwise, the way the BJP has been attacking Kejriwal personally is quite unbecoming of a national party. This just shows that BJP can only come to power through a negative campaign where the party ridicules the opposition even at the sake of getting personal, an art they had perfected during the last Lok Sabha elections.

Whether BJP wins Delhi or not, there are concerns within the party which need to be addressed and the Delhi elections should be considered as an alarm bell to initiate serious corrective action. But this is possible only if Amsha bhai (Amit Shah) admits that he is loosing the magical touch and is willing to learn from the mistakes. Else the nation knows what happens to such people and such political parties –- by the way Rahul Gandhi is also trying to address some rallies in Delhi where for a change Sheila Dixit did not have to plead the people not to leave (maybe because there were no people at all!).