Was it a self goal by the BJP in Himachal?

Amitabh Shukla / Shimla

A day after Bharatiya Janata Party lost the Himachal Pradesh Assembly election a serious introspection has begun in the party as to what went wrong in the state which the party could have won. Still to come out of the shock of the defeat, party leaders said that more than the Congress, it was the internal dynamics of BJP and poor poll management which led to the defeat.

The initial assessment of a section of the party suggests that giving free hand to veteran party president Shanta Kumar in Kangra led to a rout as the BJP managed to win only 3 of the 15 seats in the segment.  "Whoever wins Kangra, rules Shimla" goes the saying in the hill State and this time, it was practically a thorough defeat for the BJP in what is considered as a Shanta Kumar bastion. What came as a shocker to Kumar was the fact that nine candidates chosen by him lost the polls, some of them badly.

Outgoing Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal did not name Kumar but gave ample hints about the reasons for the debacle. "Faulty ticket distribution was a factor for the defeat," Dhumal said, after presiding over the last Cabinet meeting of his government. He said that tickets were allotted in two phases and in the first phase it was 45 tickets for all parts of the State. In the second list, 23 names were announced and most of them were from Kangra. Dhumal said that somehow the message spread that the party was not one on the issue of ticket distribution.

While Dhumal refrained from directly attacking Kumar, some other BJP leaders did so directly. "He is no longer in active politics. He has also lost touch with the ground realities. Blind faith of the party in his vote catching ability in Kangra was the main reason for the defeat," a senior leader said on the condition of anonymity. While both Congress and BJP were equally matched in rest of the state in this election, except perhaps Shimla which is a Congress bastion, in Kangra BJP was wiped out in the home turf of Kumar. On the other hand, in Hamirpur, the home-turf of Dhumal, the BJP did reasonably well. 

In the run up to the polls when factionalism was intense between the Dhumal and Kumar factions, Dhumal bought peace with Kumar. Sources said that broadly Dhumal agreed not to interfere in ticket distribution in Kangra and Kumar agreed not to do that in the rest of the state. "Both of them bought artificial peace and the result was disastrous," said a BJP leader here.  While BJP managed a respectable 26 seats, three of its rebels who were denied tickets too won. Moreover, Maheshwar Singh who floated thee Himachal Lokhit Party won from Kullu taking the figures of BJP rebels to four. In addition, there were five other constituencies where the votes of the BJP candidate and its rebel was more than the Congress candidate who won the polls. Party leaders said that this clearly suggests that the party could have formed its government in the state. "It was a self goal. Congress did not defeat us. The win ability of the candidates was ignored," said another party leader, who are now in the introspection mode and will submit a detailed report to the central leadership. BJP leaders here say that after the resounding defeat in Kangra, Kumar may well opt out of even recommending the names of loyalists for party tickets. He himself refused to comment on the issue.

"We will analyse the causes of the defeat in details later," said Dhumal. However, some party leaders have already trained their guns at Kumar and identified him as one of the causes. "Success has many claimants, defeat has none," said another BJP leader, sympathetic to Kumar, stressing that victory and defeat are part and parcel of electoral system. But the younger lots in the party are not ready to buy this argument. (December 22, 2012)

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