Results state-specific, corruption still an issue: BJP

In many ways, this was not a true test of BJP'S rather aggressive countrywide campaign against corruption after a spate of scams which the UPA government found itself embroiled in recently. The party has hardly ever tasted electoral triumph in states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal and this time too it failed to open its account in these states. What is going to rankle the saffron party though is its performance in Assam where its tally came down to five seats from the six it had in the outgoing assembly.

Senior BJP leaders had made no secret of the fact that the party had maximum hopes from Assam in these elections. Party president Nitin Gadkari had said that while BJP hoped to fare reasonably well in other states, it was confident of forming government in Assam. BJP on Friday tried to shift focus on the drubbing handed over to DMK-Congress combine in Tamil Nadu saying it vindicated the party's position that corruption was a major issue for voters.

The party had focused on corruption, price rise and black money stashed abroad as the three main issues ahead of the elections. The party is not likely to tone down on corruption though, as some of its top leaders believe, these results may not matter in the run-up to the make-or-break UP assembly elections next year. "We had nothing to lose in these elections," said a senior party leader as results started pouring in.

"If corruption was not an issue, why was Congress wiped out in Tamil Nadu? What prevented their landslide in Kerala? Congress is talking about our performance but we would like to ask them how many seats they won in the Bihar elections. In UP, a state which they have ruled earlier, they did not even have enough MLAs last time to elect a member to the legislative council," senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley said. The remark was in reaction to Pranab Mukherjee's jibe that despite its claim to being a national party, BJP failed to open its account in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Kerala.

The party's parliamentary board described the results as state-specific. BJP was let down in Assam by AGP, the main opposition in the state whose tally came down to 11 from 20 in 2006, which did not enter into an alliance with BJP before the elections despite attempts by the rightwing party. Senior BJP leaders also blamed AGP for cosying up to AIUDF's Badruddin Ajmal which, they claimed, drove Hindu voters to Congress. BJP is now taking solace from the fact that it finished second in 24 seats in the state.

The saving grace proved to be the Karnataka by-elections in which the party won all three seats. It also won the Bastar Lok Sabha bypoll in Chhattisgarh. The party, however, failed to open its account in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. It did manage to win a seat in West Bengal. BJP clearly did not find many takers for its onslaught against corruption which it said had become Congress-specific.

It attributed the rout of the Left in West Bengal to the worldwide decline of Marxism. "The global decline of the Marxist ideology appears to have belatedly arrived in India," said Jaitley.