The most talked-about story emerging from the BJP headquarters in the aftermath of its resounding defeat in Bihar on Sunday was the meeting of Home Minister Rajnath Singh with RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat.

Although no comments were officially made, the implications were understood across the board — BJP president Amit Shah is serving the residual term of Rajnath, who shifted to the government midway through his tenure. Amit Shah expects to be awarded a fresh term by the end of December.

The staggering defeat in Bihar, close on the heels of a similar debacle in Delhi, puts a question mark to what was earlier being considered inevitable.

Shah is an appointee of Prime Minister Narendra Modi after his sterling performance as the party strategist in Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP won 73 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats along with ally Apna Dal. He managed to consolidate his position in the first six months of his tenure by helping the BJP notch up successive victories in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand, and Jammu and Kashmir.

But after the BJP lost Delhi under his watch, the Bihar elections were being keenly observed to ascertain whether Shah is as big a strategist as he is reputed to be. Writing on the NDTV website, party MP Chandan Mitra has already pointed out that the Bihar results are a pointer to the rejection of the “high-pitched” campaign headed by Shah, as opposed to the low-key and sober strategy of Nitish Kumar.

‘Negative’ campaign

The magnitude of the defeat in Bihar, where every aspect of the BJP’s strategy was crafted by Shah, is bound to reflect negatively on his future prospects. Already, his “negative” campaign, symbolised by his public utterances – including a comment about “crackers” being “burst in Pakistan” in the event of the BJP losing the elections, has invited much criticism not only from the opponents but also from within the party ranks.

Aside from being branded “ narbhakshi (cannibal)” and “ brahm pishach (ogre)” for running a “communal campaign” by Lalu Prasad, Shah has emerged the focal point of criticism for appointing “outsiders” — Ananth Kumar, Dharmendra Pradhan, Bhupendra Yadav, and CR Patil — as election managers in Bihar where “Bihari-versus-Bahri” became the buzzword. Additionally, seat distribution too led to deep heartburn and dissensions in the party.

Local leaders

As pointed out by the BJP’s former election manager Prashant Kishore, who has since been poached by Nitish, Shah has also managed to “dilute” Brand Modi by the excessive use of the PM in the campaign. The BJP relied less on its local leaders and more on the PM’s powerhouse performances throughout the State.

Shah himself camped in Bihar and addressed several rallies while pressing almost all Union Ministers from the State into the campaign. By dispatching Ravi Shankar Prasad, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Radha Mohan Singh and Giriraj Singh, besides allies Ram Vilas Paswan and Upendra Kushwaha, to Bihar for the duration of the elections, the BJP seemed to justify Nitish’s charge that the “entire Cabinet” had abandoned work to defeat him.

In the immediate aftermath of the defeat, Shah convened a meeting of all his election managers on Sunday. A meeting of the BJP’s parliamentary board has been scheduled for Monday to discuss the results.

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