THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The performance of the BJP candidate in the Vengara bypoll has stunned the state leadership with a section of the leaders blaming the central leadership for the fiasco. The party, which hoped to better its position in the bypoll, was unable to retain its third position, conceding it to the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI). The party candidate P.T. Ali Haji had polled 7,055 votes whereas K. Janachandran Master could secure only 5,728 votes this time around.
In fact, the party had high hopes on the bypoll as evidenced by the willingness expressed by several prominent and local leaders to contest the polls at the time of deciding the candidate. The party chose the local leader, who finally cut a sorry figure. It should be recalled that a battalion of central BJP leaders including national president Amit Shah had trooped in to Kannur coinciding with the Janaraksha Yatra. But the state and central BJP leaders had spent only a few hours at Vengara when Yatra passed through the constituency.
BJP leaders cite several reasons, including the party machinery being busy with the Janaraksha Yathra, but are mum on the possible impact it had on the voters of Vengara. A peeved senior BJP leader told DC that his party never try to learn from mistakes. “The strategy of the BJP in the 2016 Assembly elections was to tap the votes of the backward communities, especially the Ezhavas and Dalits,” the leader said. “It came unstuck but the party never bothered to introspect what went wrong.”
A senior leader said a section of senior leaders are actually misleading the leaderships for their own vested interests even as he criticized the way in which BJP central leadership resorted to hold a series of protest marches to CPM headquarters AKG Bhavan in New Delhi terming it “undemocratic”. Another leader told DC that the leaderships should hang their heads in shame at the drubbing the party has received at the polls. “It is the failure of Mr Shah, too, as the voters would have noticed the allegations of corruption leveled against his son,” he said. “If things continue this way, BJP candidates will lose their deposits as well in the next Lok Sabha elections.”
