By-polls defeat is the beginning of the end for BJP, warns Shiv Sena

The Shiv Sena mocked the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for its defeat in the Lok Sabha by-polls on Friday, and referred to it as “the beginning of the end” for its ally.

If current trends and results of the recently concluded Lok Sabha by-elections in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are an indicator, the BJP’s tally may drop to 100-110 in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the Sena said in an editorial in the party’s mouthpiece ‘Saamana’, titled ‘The beginning of the end’.

“The Samajwadi Party’s two victories in BJP bastions such as Gorakhpur and Phulpur has created panic in the BJP camp, even as they were busy celebrating the party’s victory in a small state like Tripura last week,” the Marathi daily said. There have been 10 by-polls since Prime Minister Narendra Modi has come to power, it said, and the BJP has lost nine of them. Its tally has slipped from 282 to 272, which is the halfway mark in the 543-seat Lok Sabha.

The SP candidates secured big margins in Gorakhpur and Phulpur, indicating that people went out of their way to ensure that the BJP lost, the editorial said. While the SP’s Praveen Nishad defeated Upendra Dutt Shukla from the BJP by 21,961 votes in Gorakhpur, a seat that has been with the party since 1989, Nagendra Pratap Singh Patel clinched the Phulpur seat, drubbing the saffron party’s Kaushalendra Singh Patel by 59,460 votes.

The BJP came to power riding on a Modi wave, but the wave has receded and “people can see everything clearly now”, the Sena said. “Barely a year ago, the BJP had won the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls with a record 325 seats. Yogi Adityanath, who has not lost the Gorakhpur seat since 1991, became the state chief minister. So despite the huge popularity that they enjoyed, why has this citadel shattered,” the editorial asked.