Congress pledges, united Muslim vote led to loss in Karnataka: BJP review

NEW DELHI: BJP's initial assessment of its performance in the Karnataka assembly polls has suggested that Congress's guarantee card, Muslim consolidation in favour of the rival and lack of coordination among party members were key factors behind the debacle.
Senior BJP leaders have been holding meetings with party functionaries who were assigned different responsibilities in the state to assess what went wrong. "Congress's guarantee cards were distributed in almost all households. Most of its promises were women-centric," a BJP functionary said, adding that BJP's manifesto promises were equally promising but it was too late.
A leader said the usual trend was of Muslim votes getting divided between Congress and JD(S) and the party couldn't gauge the community had dumped the regional party and was strongly consolidating in favour of Congress.