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Results show we are not losing ground: Rajnath

Neena Vyas

Rajnath Singh

NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party celebrated its victories in the Assembly by-elections in different States on Monday, hoping that a new trend would set in and bring it some cheer after the poor show in the Lok Sabha elections.

Party president Rajnath Singh said the results showed that the BJP was “not on a sticky wicket” and was not losing ground in States ruled by it.

Spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad saw a “ray of hope” and pointed out that the party wrested seats from the Congress it had not won since Independence.

In Gujarat, the BJP won five out of the seven by-elections. The Congress held six of these seats. Included in the BJP’s victories was the Assembly segment of Jasdan in Rajkot, which, Mr. Prasad said, the BJP had never won since Independence. He criticised the Congress for “hyping” the issue of the 2004 encounter deaths of Ishrat Jehan and three others, just before polling was due.

This, he said, proved counter-productive for the Congress, which in the public perception, seemed to be “on the side of Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists.”

Although, Chief Minister Narendra Modi did not campaign at all, the victories are being attributed to the people’s approval of his government. One senior leader said there was also a difference in the manner people vote for an Assembly election, where the focus is on the State government’s administration, and the Lok Sabha election, where national issues and the national mood dominate.

In Uttarakhand, where the BJP won both by-elections, party leaders are attributing this to the “timely” replacement of B.C. Khanduri, during whose tenure as chief Minister, the party lost all five Lok Sabha seats in the State. In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP won one Assembly by-election and the Congress took the other seat. Both were held by the Congress.

The party’s more than decent showing in the by-elections is seen as a morale booster after the criticism of the leadership by some senior leaders and the expulsion of Jaswant Singh.

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