Did BJP misread wave and stall assembly polls?

Ranchi: BJP’s state unit seems to have misread the undercurrent and underestimated its own ability ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, where it bagged 51% of the vote share and won 12 of the 14 seats in the state to match its performance in 2014.
With the assembly polls scheduled to take place in the state before the year ends, political observers said that with numbers like these, BJP and its NDA partner Ajsu Party would have sailed through the state polls had the party decided to dissolve the assembly and go for simultaneous polls.
Even some party insiders admit they failed to gauge the intensity of the Modi wave. Barring two seats — Lohardaga and Khunti — where the BJP’s winning margin was narrow, the NDAs remaining 10 MPs (nine from BJP and one from Ajsu Party) won by margins between 1.84 lakh (Godda) to 4.79 lakh votes (Hazaribag).
Opinion polls ahead of the parliamentary elections painted a dismal picture for the saffron party in the state and there were certain unpopular decisions of the state government which did not go down well in the tribal pockets. The opposition was also actively campaigning against the Raghubar Das government’s efforts to amend the pro-tribal tenancy laws. The party was also under pressure when the entire opposition in Jharkhand came together as early as January 2019 and an official announcement of a mahagathbandhan was first made in this state.
BJP state spokesperson Pratul Shadeo said they were not expecting such overwhelming numbers. “Though the results are way beyond our expectations, we were never prepared to go for simultaneous assembly elections because a lot remains to be accomplished in the next five months,” he said.
Shahdeo added that the party is confident about winning the assembly elections with two-third majority and they were not in any kind of rush. “Had we been on slippery ground in the state assembly, we would have tried to piggyback on the Modi wave. But since the party has performed well even in the state, there was no need for us to pre-empt the state polls,” he said.
National Election Watch (NEW) of Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) has been an electoral watchdog in Jharkhand. NEW state convener Sudhir Pal said the state BJP played it safe and did not put all its eggs in one basket. “The party itself was not convinced about the massive victory and they were not ready to take the risk of transferring the state anti-incumbency to the general elections. It would also have been bad for the electorate if BJP had dissolved the assembly and opted for simultaneous polls because all local issues would have been washed out in the storm of nationalism and rhetoric about central schemes,” he said.
Even if the state BJP missed the opportunity, it is not ready to let the wave subside before the assembly elections. Chief minister Raghubar Das and BJP organizational general secretary Dharam Pal Singh convened a review meeting on Friday to start planning for the assembly elections. The party has decided to focus primarily on Santhal Pargana, where it has made the first substantial foray by routing JMM patriarch and eight-time MP Shibu Soren from Dumka.
BJP has 43 MLAs in the 81-member assembly and enjoys the support of four Ajsu Party MLAs. Though the party has suffered loss of one member as Ramgarh MLA Chandra Prakash Choudhary has been now become an MP from Giridih, it is eying at least 55 seats on its own and 18 assembly segments of the tribal-dominated Santhal Pargana would be crucial to achieve the target.