BJP is in no mood to contest elections in Modi’s name, after losses in Delhi & Bihar, Narendra Modi, Bharatiya Janata Party, Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Punjab, Uttarakhand,UP,Upcoming elections in india ,state assembly polls 2016
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- Last Updated: Tuesday, 29 December 2015 14:44
BJP is in no mood to contest elections in Modi’s name, after losses in Delhi & Bihar, Narendra Modi, Bharatiya Janata Party, Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Punjab, Uttarakhand,UP,Upcoming elections in india ,state assembly polls 2016
After assiduously using Naredra Modi's charisma as its main weapon in each state election over the past two years, the Bharatiya Janata Party is finally abandoning this strategy.
The turnaround, engendered by the consecutive defeats in Delhi and Bihar, will be reflected first in Assam, which goes to polls next year, party insiders say.
The new strategy – or the return to the pre-Modi era practice – will continue even after the Assam elections, party officials said. “Although Delhi showed the first signs of fatigue with the Modi-centric strategy, Bihar results confirmed this,” a senior BJP leader said, requesting anonymity. “Now the situation is such that the party would have to suffer if it continues to seek votes in the name of the prime minister.”
Several states, including Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, go to polls in the next year and a half. Of these, the BJP has little or no chances in Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and in Punjab it contests as a junior partner of the Shiromani Akali Dal.
The first steps
The first step in this direction was taken over a month ago when the BJP decided to appoint Union Minister of State for Sports and Youth Welfare Sarbananda Sonowal as the new president of the party unit in Assam as well as the chairman of the state election committee. Party insiders say Sonowal will be projected as BJP’s chief ministerial candidate well in advance.
Sonowal was the Assam unit chief at the time of the Lok Sabha elections, in which the BJP won seven of the state’s 14 seats. Soon after the general elections, though, he gave up the state post and joined the Narendra Modi government at the Centre.
The sweeping victory in the general elections, which the BJP fought around Modi, started a trend that continued in Maharashtra, Haryana and Bihar. In these states, the saffron party announced no chief ministerial candidate, instead seeking votes in the name of Modi. Now that trend will end.
New challenge
The shift is being seen in the BJP as further proof that Modi, a leader who revels in electoral jousts, may no longer be the dependable vote-getter he was once portrayed to be.
The first indication of the dwindling confidence in his electoral abilities had come soon after the Bihar results were declared on November 8. In Ratlam-Jhabua Lok Sabha constituency, where campaign for a by-election was in full swing then, the Bihar outcome had an unusual impact – it made local BJP leaders so nervous that they removed several posters and hoardings featuring Modi they had put up before November 8.