Karnataka elections: For BJP, south hold gone, hard matches ahead

BJP's drubbing in the Karnataka assembly polls comes as a wake-up call with many electoral battles - state polls in three big states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh this year - lined up before the general elections next year when Prime Minister Narendra Modi will seek a mandate for a third term.

While party circles believe the defeat, certainly the scale of it, was caused largely by local factors, the BJP has also increasingly faced a dilemma as the leadership steps in for seemingly weak, divided and unpopular local units. In Karnataka, the central leadership found itself doing the heavy lifting after B S Yediyurappa's replacement as CM and the failure of his successor Basavaraj Bommai to fill the former's large Lingayat shoes.

Modi and home minister Amit Shah were the party mascots during the campaign and BJP cadres hoped the two leaders would overcome the challenges. But along with optimism also crept in complacency, the unwillingness to take initiatives, over-reliance on the central leadership, as also the desire to brush unpleasant feedback under the carpet.

The party's defeat in its strongholds shows strong anti-incumbency had built up against sitting MLAs. Party circles acknowledge that former CM Jagadish Shettar and former deputy CM Lakshman Savadi, who were benched, were unreasonable in insisting on tickets for themselves, but also feel that the leadership should have factored in whether replacing them would play into Congress's efforts to incite Lingayats. When the party woke up to the risk,MLAs were dropped, but substitutes, in many cases, happened to be their kin or loyalists.

BJP was also slow in responding to the 40% commission charge that Congress exploited. The charge gained traction because of the suicide by a contractor, Santosh Patil, who accused senior party leader K Eshwarappa of demanding a 40% cut. "It is a pity. We failed in countering Congress's hyped campaign on corruption," a senior party functionary said.

He and his colleagues also said that while Modi's campaign ensured that there was only a slim drop in the party's vote share, it proved to be inadequate because of the consolidation of Muslims behind Congress at the expense of JD(S). "These are perhaps early signs of the emergence of a bipolar polity and we will have to go to the drawing board again," the senior party functionary said.

Although he expressed confidence that Lok Sabha elections would see the party bounce back, BJP will find itself having to resolve the "local versus central" complication also in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan where powerful factions, resentful of the primacy of Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Vasundhara Raje have been courting intervention. Besides, the party will have to rethink about the consolidation of Muslim voters against it, which happened in West Bengal and now in Karnataka. "The success of Karnataka model will only encourage the efforts to get the community to vote en block against us," acknowledged a source.

The party will also have to make a plan to counter the opposition party's freebies offer, which appears to have worked for Congress in Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh, after helping AAP score a landslide in Punjab.