While the loss of a couple of seats here and there in a by-election by a political party is understandable, the defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party in eight of the 11 Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh should deeply concern the ruling party at the Centre.
After all, only a little over three months ago, it had swept the State in the Lok Sabha election, winning 71 of the 80 seats on offer.
What should be further worrisome for the BJP is that it has lost a majority of the Assembly seats it had held, including that of Rohania which is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency.
For the party, this is not a good harbinger, given that it has set its sights on claiming the State in the Assembly election due in a couple of years' time.
Clearly, something is amiss in the party's organisation in the State which failed to capitalise on the wave of goodwill that Mr Modi has generated and the tremendous groundwork which BJP president Amit Shah did during the general election.
State party president Laxmikant Bajpai has taken the blame for the loss, but that is not enough. It is time for a complete overhaul of the set-up to restore confidence and enthusiasm in the cadre.
The BJP should be thankful that the jolt has come early enough for it to do a course correction and be fighting fit when the Assembly poll dawns.
While the party bigwigs will be deliberating on the reasons for the defeat, several explanations are already being touted by analysts, primary among them being that the people have punished the BJP for the ‘communal campaign' which some its senior leaders allegedly unleashed. This is the easiest available stick with which rivals of the party get to beat the BJP.
However, such a simplistic conclusion fails to take into account the various other local factors that could have determined the outcome. One such cause is the selection of candidates.
There is already rumbling that the BJP lost a few seats due to a wrong choice of candidates. Also, at least one defeated candidate has alleged that the local Member of Parliament did not whole-heartedly campaign in his favour, and was even antagonistic.
For now these are accusations and the party will be able to more accurately pinpoint the reasons once it thoroughly studies the result.
Meanwhile, it need not slump into depression, because all is not lost, though some political experts would like to believe otherwise by linking this defeat to the BJP's average performance in the recent by-election in Bihar and Karnataka and seeing an ominous pattern.
The party along with its ally, the Shiv Sena, is poised to dislodge the Congress-led regime in the coming Assembly election in Maharashtra, while it is on strong turf in Haryana, which along with Maharashtra votes on October 15.
The Samajwadi Party need not consider its victory in the by-election (it won eight of the 11 Assembly seats) as an endorsement of its governance in the State — which has been and remains pathetic.
Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav can smile for now, but the mood of the people of the State in general remains grim. The fear that, emboldened by the win, the ruling Samajwadi Party may turn even more indifferent to administration and stoop further in the politics of appeasement, is very real.
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