BJP is a national party and cadre based; it should introspect”. Her emphasis clearly on the word ‘cadres’ had the real story behind the news of electoral drubbing that day.

BJP has been winning Krishna Nagar assembly segment since 1993, was given to Kiran Bedi to ensure easy passage.

In 2013, Dr Harsh Vardhan won by 43000 votes and Kiran Bedi lost 2200 votes this time implying about 45000 voters have changed their loyalty. “This is certainly due to resentment among traditional BJP voters against Bedi and this could not be translated into concrete votes without RSS foot soldiers and BJP cadres reaching out to the voters with their campaign against the party Chief Ministerial candidate herself,” says a BJP Minister, who campaigned aggressively.

The defeat of Congress losing out all 70 seats told the story more intensely. These came on the backdrop of Rahul Gandhi’s assertion in December 2013 that “I will bring the changes you all cannot imagine”. Sadly, for Rahul and his plans and changes, in as many as 63 assembly segments, Congress nominees forfeited deposits. Thus the swelled up vote share for AAP (54.3 per cent) is understandable as against around 9 per cent for Congress. For BJP it stood at around 32 marking a significant nosedive from BJP’s vote share of 46 per cent in Lok Sabha elections in May 2014.

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