Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): State BJP president VD Sharma has said the party has identified those who ‘changed colour’ during the election process.
Sharma was responding to journalists' questions as to what led to the party’s defeat in civic body polls in Gwalior-Chambal region.
Sharma said the election had helped the party leadership to identify the factors, which led to the defeat and those who changed colours. The corrective measures would be taken at the earliest, he added.
Notably, the BJP lost mayoral election in Gwalior and Morena to Congress in the recently concluded polls. It suffered another setback in Vindhya region where it lost Rewa mayoral election to Congress and Singrauli to AAP.
In Mahakoshal, the party lost Chhindwara and Jabalpur mayoral seats to Congress, Katni to an Independent candidate.
The defeat in Gwalior-Chambal has come as a major setback to the ruling party given the fact the region has two union ministers- Jyotiraditya Scindia and Narendra Singh Tomar and at least 9 ministers in the state cabinet from the region.
Also, Morena in Chambal region happens to be the home town of the state BJP president VD Sharma and Lok Sabha constituency of union minister Narendra Singh Tomar.
Talking to media persons in Indore the BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya termed the defeat in the region as alarming and said the party should look into the reasons which caused the defeat.
However, the state BJP spokesperson Rajnees Agrawal said, “Media didn’t analyse the results in the right perspective. It is talking of the party’s defeat on certain seats in the backdrop that our party had won all the 16 seats of mayor in the previous elections.”
Rajneesh said those analysing the performance of the party must not forget that in the last two years the civic bodies didn’t have public representatives and thus these were governed by administrative authorities. There was a possibility that people were not happy with the authorities in these cities and it voted against the ruling party. Further, analysts must not forget that BJP had achieved historic success overall in the civic body polls.
