BJP leaders give the slip

Ahmedabad woke up to a cloudy day on Thursday. Although the sun shone bright later during the day, a pall of gloom descended over the state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) office, as a resurgent Congress literally snatched away six seats from the BJP kitty, effectively doubling its tally.

Unlike previous election result days (most recently, the December 2002 assembly elections) when the state BJP office was decked up and the firecrackers did not cease for hours, the BJP office wore a deserted look on Thursday.

Barring a couple of leaders and just a handful of party workers, the Khanpur office of the Bharatiya Janata Party had nothing much to offer. And as results began filtering in, depicting considerable losses to the BJP, even the handful of party workers were not seen at the office.

State law minister Ashok Bhatt, who visited counting centres when early trends were available, had stated that the BJP will hold on to the 21 seats that it held in the dissolved house.

"The BJP will hold on to the seats that it held," he said before leaving the counting centre," he said in reply to a question that trends suggested that the BJP was losing out on the seats that it held.

State BJP president Rajendrasinh Rana, who won the Bhavnagar seat, but his party took a beating elsewhere, was not reachable.

In Bhavnagar, his aides kept saying that he was either busy in meetings or was occupied with other tasks. The signal that was clearly being sent out was that the BJP was not willing to face the people after the loss of face.

BJP leader Suresh Mehta, who spent a few hours at the BJP state office inthe afternoon, blamed the weather, the marriage season and the low turnout for the loss of seats.