BJP LOST THE BATTLE DUE TO OVERCONFIDENCE:VINOD

BJP LOST THE BATTLE DUE TO OVERCONFIDENCE:VINOD

4-AUG-ENG 5

RAJIV NAYAN AGRAWAL

PATNA-----------------------When the claim was made that even a dog or a cat would win the election if given the party symbol, no senior BJP leader refuted it. Consequently, voters came to believe that what Prashant Kishor was saying was absolutely true. Often, when leaders make such remarks, the party's top leadership dismisses them as personal statements rather than the party's official stance. All in all, due to overconfidence, the party failed to take the matter seriously.

The implications of Ravi Shankar Prasad’s "dog-cat" remark will now be scrutinized following the election defeat. It is widely believed that a senior leader of his stature would not simply make a slip of the tongue. Perhaps he was displeased about being removed from his ministerial post at the Centre and seeing Nitin Navin—who belongs to the same caste but is younger and less experienced—elevated to the position of National President. Questions may now arise within the party. Even Nitin Navin might shift the blame onto Ravi Shankar Prasad to save his own reputation.

The BJP was so overconfident about winning that it did not even attempt to send a message through a joint press conference with the top leaders of its alliance partners. They assumed that since Bankipur was a BJP stronghold and Nitin Navin—who had become a minister—was the candidate, victory was assured. They failed to realize that while he may have become a minister, he has not yet evolved into a mass leader like Nitish Kumar. He failed to grasp the distinction between merely assuming office and becoming a mass leader.

The BJP was overconfident about its prospects in the Bankipur Assembly by-election, a miscalculation that ultimately led to its downfall. This overconfidence was evident when Jan Suraaj candidate Prashant Kishor highlighted a missed opportunity: had there been a joint press conference featuring former Chief Minister Nitish Kumar alongside LJP supremo and Union Minister Chirag Paswan, HAM supremo Jitan Ram Manjhi, RLSP supremo Upendra Kushwaha, and BJP state leaders like Sanjay Sarawagi or Samrat Chaudhary, the outcome might have been different. BJP leaders might now be wondering why they didn't involve top leaders from NDA allies in Chief Minister Samrat Chaudhary's roadshow. When the opposition tried to stir up controversy by claiming Nitish Kumar was being forcibly removed from the Chief Minister's post, Nitish himself had quelled that narrative—even though the public believed he was being coerced into stepping down and that his statements about moving to the Rajya Sabha were made under pressure. Meanwhile, seeing Nitish Kumar absent from the by-election campaign led his supporters to feel he was being sidelined, causing internal resentment among them. If BJP leaders failed to sense this, it is evident that they still have a long way to go in gauging the public pulse.

Prashant Kishor was actively fueling the "cat-and-dog" rhetoric from the stage. Meanwhile, Jan Suraaj Party workers were describing Bunty and Neeraj Kumar Sinha—likening one to a dog and the other to a cat. Meanwhile, there was resentment over the fact that neither BJP spokesperson Ajay Alok nor Rishi Sinha (son of RK Sinha) had been given the ticket; the idea of ​​a grassroots worker receiving the ticket did not sit well with many. This is precisely why the BJP appeared to be trailing in every round of counting.

On the other hand, Prashant Kishor had shifted into aggressive mode the moment the Election Commission announced the polling dates. His combative stance regarding the detention of 16 of his key leaders during the final stages of the election boosted the morale of his supporters. Observers note that Kishor’s strategy involved preventing his supporters from gathering in large numbers at any single polling station. In doing so, he kept the BJP under the illusion that Jan Suraaj was not even in the race.