The jubilant mood at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) headquarters in Delhi on Tuesday evening said it all. The victory in Haryana against all odds, and the best-ever performance in Jammu and Kashmir, has brought the spring back in the step of the BJP and a resurgent confidence ahead of upcoming key election battles in Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Delhi in the next four months.
The Haryana victory buttresses BJP’s stand that it has no competition in direct battles with the Congress — as seen earlier last year when the party won key election battles in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also drilled in the point on Tuesday that Congress has not even able to repeat power in any state, except Assam many years ago, while the BJP has done this repeatedly.
The celebrations in Maharashtra by the BJP unit there indicated how BJP is now confident of victory in this key state as well, though many perceive it to be on the back-foot in the state after the Lok Sabha election results. A senior BJP leader said the Haryana result had thrown up the aspect of ‘voter remorse’ too, as Haryana was one state where BJP’s tally had fallen to half in the recent Lok Sabha elections.
“People felt remorse for not voting for the BJP in large numbers in Haryana and have overwhelmingly voted for the party in the assembly elections just three months later. The situation is similar in Maharashtra where the NDA tally was down in the Lok Sabha but we expect people now to vote for us in large numbers in the upcoming state elections there,” a senior BJP leader told CNN-News18.
In Jharkhand, the BJP has got former CM Champai Soren on board which is expected to give it a head-start in key regions of the state dominated by tribal population. The BJP is also factoring in trouble in the opposition alliance camp in both Jharkhand and Maharashtra with the bargaining power of Congress being down and other opposition allies not keen to give away many seats to the party in these poll battles.
BJP leaders say that above all, the mojo is back in the party camp as Rahul Gandhi’s campaign of Modi being ‘weakened’ as a PM post the Lok Sabha results, has been demolished by the BJP’s performance in Haryana and J&K. This comes in sharp contrast to Congress losing in Haryana and notching up just six seats in J&K. The BJP has yet again shown that under Narendra Modi, it has the capacity to bounce back.
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