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BJP's Delhi debacle a personal defeat for Modi?
He campaigned like a local leader, handpicked his own chief ministerial
candidate for Delhi and made it a personal referendum on his leadership.
Yet Prime Minister Narendra Modi could not halt the AAP juggernaut in
these assembly polls and in the process lost his first election since
his winning streak began with the Gujarat assembly polls in 2002.
Modi
delivered Gujarat for his party for three consecutive terms in 2002,
2007 and 2012 after he was parachuted to the state from Delhi in 2001.
His portrayal as the party's prime ministerial candidate in the 2014
general election was a direct result of this winning spree and he
managed to win yet again with the BJP for the first time getting a full
majority in the Lok Sabha.
Despite assiduous efforts by the party
to firewall him from the defeat, the facts are inescapable that the BJP
- and Modi personally - has paid the price for putting his own image
and reputation at stake in a provincial poll.
In fact Kiran
Bedi's defeat in the Krishna Nagar constituency should be a personal
defeat for Modi, who not only chose her in spite of her not even being a
primary member of the party, but campaigned aggressively for her in
ways no prime minister has done for a local poll.
The BJP
campaign bypassed local leaders and focussed solely on Modi's supposedly
personal charisma. It was obvious that Bedi as the chief ministerial
candidate was just a proxy and Modi intended to exploit his own larger
than life image in this election.
Such was his hubris that Modi
stuck his neck out and put himself loud and large in every advertisement
of the party in the election - from bus shelters to billboards to
newspapers.
All posters and full page advertisements in
newspapers even on the day of polling had full blown pictures of Modi
with Bedi, the party's chief ministerial candidate, occupying only inset
space at the bottom. In a personal letter to voters on election day Feb
7, Modi promised a "world-class city" and said it was his undertaking
that he would make Delhi a city that its citizens would be proud of.
Modi
held four rallies in the run up to the Delhi polls, stretching from
Ambedkar Nagar to Rohini, but his party could not manage to win even
four seats. Kejriwal raced home in 67 of the 70 assembly seats with his
"paanch saal Kejriwal (Five years to Kejriwal)" slogan.
But will Modi be held accountable for the massive drubbing his party got in the Delhi polls?
Not
if the party leaders and spokesmen are to be believed. Despite the call
by Kirti Azad, a medium-level leader of the party, that "heads should
roll", most of the party faces that came on television sought to shield
Modi and declared that it was "not a referendum on his prime
ministership".
BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said it was not a
national election and did not reflect on Modi. In fact, BJP President
Amit Shah in an interview last week seems to have sought anticipatory
bail for his leader saying: "Delhi polls will not be a referendum on
Modi".
Modi's Rs.10 lakh suit with his name written on it during
US President Barack Obama's visit and his supposedly arrogant style of
functioning seem to have rubbed people the wrong way.
Most
political analysts have blamed his arrogant style for BJP's massive
defeat in the Delhi election. Veteran journalist and commentator Kuldip
Nayar told IANS: "The way the BJP carried out a Modi-centric campaign,
any loss is of course a reflection on him (prime minister)."
H.
K. Dua, MP, who has been an editor of some leading dailies, said that
the Delhi elections reminded of 1977 election in which Indira Gandhi was
defeated.
"This election verdict reminds of 1977 when the
electorate stunned the then prime minister Indira Gandhi by inflicting a
resounding defeat to her after her (authoritarian) emergency rule.
People of Delhi have delivered a somewhat similar message this time," he
said.
Kejriwal's win seems to be the beginning of a new
political era for the country with a focus on local leaders and local
issues - bijli, paani, sadak - instead of high voltage foreign policy
initiatives which Modi seems to have shown a flair for.
The
common man or the 'Aam Aadmi' seems to be asking the prime minister how
his life can change even if Obama was Modi's best friend.
As
Congress leader Manish Tewari summed it up: "People wanted to teach BJP
(read Modi) and its arrogance a lesson, they decided AAP is the
instrument of their choice rather than Congress."
(Sreeparna Chakrabarty can be contacted at [email protected])