BJP yet to put its finger on what went wrong in Odisha

BJP failed to explain what went wrong against its ‘Mission 120’ despite having a robust organisation with nearly 40 lakh members.
PM Narendra Modi with BJP Odisha president Basanta Kumar Panda (File Photo | EPS)
PM Narendra Modi with BJP Odisha president Basanta Kumar Panda (File Photo | EPS)

BHUBANESWAR: While some senior leaders of the BJP, who lost the Assembly elections with a slender margin, attributed their defeat to internal sabotage and secret understanding of party’s Lok Sabha candidates with the BJD nominees, the State unit of the saffron party blamed it on the massive money power and rampant misuse of official machinery by the regional party for its poor performance.

Even after a thorough analysis of the poll results at two separate forums of the party here on Sunday, the BJP failed to explain what went wrong against its ‘Mission 120’ despite having a robust organisation with nearly 40 lakh members and a strong wave in favour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

As senior leaders of the party, who are part of the internal churning at the core committee meeting followed by another meeting of state and district office-bearers, provide different reasons for the debacle of the party, there are a few leaders like former MLA Radharani Panda who expressed their anger against the political machination of a powerful few within the party.

Giving three reasons for her defeat from Brajarajnagar Assembly seat, Radharani said she was a victim of internal sabotage.

“I am sure that there was an understanding at some level with the ruling BJD as evident from the split voting which is seen for the first time. I lost despite the fact that our party candidate for Bargarh Lok Sabha seat got maximum lead from my constituency and won the poll. I fail to understand the logic,” she told reporters.

However, Pradip Purohit, who lost from Padampur Assembly segment of Bargarh parliamentary seat, came out with different reason for his debacle.

While 10 BJP candidates lost the election with a margin of below 5,000 votes, another 13 candidates faced the drubbing in a margin of 5,000 to 8,000 votes.

As many as 81 candidates of the party secured second position by pushing the Congress to third place. “I lost the election as maximum number of Congress votes shifted to the BJD,” he explained.

After realising that the party failed to reap the desired benefit of a similar Modi wave in the 2014 polls due to lack of booth infrastructure, national BJP president Amit Shah launched a booth level programme called ‘Mo Booth Sabuthu Mazbhoot’ (my booth is the strongest) in about 36,000 booths in the 147 Assembly segments, aiming to garner over one crore votes to go past the 100+ mark. In the 2014 election, BJD won 117 seats with 93 lakh votes.

The booth level programme was launched after the stupendous success of the party in the 2017 panchayat polls when the BJP secured around 67 lakh votes registering a nine-fold jump in the number of Zilla Parishad seats it won. Shah had set a target of 400 votes from each of its 36,000 booth-level committees (1.4 crore votes) to achieve his mission.

However, the party could manage to improve its position by increasing its voting percentage from 18 per cent in 2014 to 32.85 per cent in 2019 by improving its tally from 10 to 23 in the Assembly.

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