It is introspection time for the BJP

When the top Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership gathered yesterday morning at the residence of the former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to take stock of the results coming out from Maharashtra, it did not take much time for the mood to grow sullen, even as suppressed excitement was visible in the Congress headquarters just about a kilometre away.

The inability of the BJP-Shiv Sena to convert a rather insipid governance in the last five years by the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party led Democratic Front into its own advantage is now bound to have long-term impact on the two parties. The hawks in the BJP are already sharpening their knives to attack the party leadership for its failure to utilise its USP, that of a Hindutva hardliner party.

The question mark is also looming large on the further continuance of party president M. Venkaiah Naidu as well as erstwhile poster boy of the party, Pramod Mahajan, at the helm of the party organisation.

Simultaneously the party headquarters, which wore a sullen look, is already abuzz with the demand for the return of its once-upon-a-time mascot Lal Krishna Advani as the party president.

Differences

This is introspection time however for the party which has witnessed numbing defeats one after the other, after a euphoric 2003, which culminated with the victories in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.

What has gone wrong with the party, which just over 120 days ago was floating in the air, with the notion that they were there to stay at the helm of country's affairs for years to come.

One immediate reason, at least for the Maharashtra defeat, seems to be a gradual disconnect with the problems of the people and confusion about the issues involved.

Second is the weakening of its partner, the Shiv Sena, and the differences that have cropped up within among the competing heir apparents of its chief Bal Thackeray. The confusion and shock suffered by the BJP following the Lok Sabha debacle and the resultant infighting witnessed among the second line of leadership, seems to have been carried to the Vindhyas, too, which affected the party campaign and strategy.

The BJP now will have to reconcile itself to an extended period of vegetation. Advani, even if he agrees to once again lead the party, is not likely to make much difference to the slide in the fortunes of the party being witnessed.

Agreement

If BJP and Shiv Sena have a lot to ponder over, the only thing Congress, more so Sonia Gandhi, will have to decide is whether to concede the chief ministership to the NCP.

Since the agreement had always been that the party with more MLAs would have its candidate as the chief minister, it should not be a big problem for Sonia to concede it.

The NCP chief Sharad Pawar has behaved in a gentlemanly fashion, even yesterday afternoon, when he conceded the right to chief ministership to the Congress, "even if they have one MLA more than us". Sonia therefore needs to reciprocate this gentlemanly gesture.

For the Congress and NCP, however, this is the just the beginning of a challenging period. They now have to prove far better administrators than they were in the last five years, to justify this rather unusual gesture of the people of Maharashtra.

From the larger national point of view, this victory for the secular forces bodes well for the next round of state elections in Bihar, Jharkhand and Haryana. For the UPA Government and Dr Manmohan Singh it is time for them to redeem all the pledges they had made to the people of Maharashtra during the campaign.

For Sonia Gandhi it is another round of vindication of her newfound politics of alliance, which she now seems to have mastered with this victory. She can now only go from strength to strength.

Girish Nikam is a commentator

on political affairs