BJP surprised by drubbing; clamour for change in brass

Thiruvananthapuram: BJP camp is yet to come to terms with the serious drubbing the party received in the assembly elections. The defeat in Nemom and the significant dip in NDA’s vote share has taken the leadership off guard, leaving no room for justifications.
The BJP camp and its allies have no clue yet on what led to the severe setback. Also, there is no agreement among leaders over NDA’s vote share this time. When chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said that NDA’s vote share came down by 2.5% in the assembly elections, the leaders in the saffron camp have no figures at hand to counter or corroborate it.
“There is a dip in the vote share. But that cannot be as big as what the political opponents claim”, is what most BJP leaders say.
According to the statistics published by the election commission, BJP has got only 11.3% votes. The NDA had a vote share of 14.96% in 2016 assembly elections. BJP leaders consider the performance and involvement of BDJS as poor.
“But, BJP cannot accuse BDJS for its abysmal performance. If there was disinterest in BDJS, it was total chaos and lack of planning that ruled BJP. What the party needs is a shock treatment, not pain balm,” said a senior BJP leader.
Disgruntled leaders in the BJP state unit, at loggerheads with president K Surendran, would soon start pitching for a leadership change.
BJP central leadership’s usual practice of addressing organizational failure by changing the state president is prompting them to make such a move. But many in the party believe that a mere leadership change won’t do any good for the party.
“BJP has no party machinery in the grassroot level. It still depends on RSS cadres to meet that gap. This is in fact not a strategy that central leadership recommends. RSS being a non-political organization that works with long-term goals often finds no prick of consciousness in asking its cadres to vote for CPM or Congress for reasons best known to them. In fact, in one of the meetings in Ernakulam, Amit Shah had expressed his disgust over BJP filling up its leadership positions with RSS functionaries only,” said a BJP candidate, who believes that RSS deserted him in the last hour.