The obscure and nondescript Bengali dominated valley came into national the limelight, raising many questions in political circles about BJP making deep roads into a Congress held citadel since the very first general elections of 1952.

After that, however, it was a mixed fortune for BJP in subsequent elections, but nevertheless came to be accepted as a formidable challenge to Congress. The emergence of AIUDF led by Badaruddin Ajmal, a perfume baron with multimillion dollar stakes in the Middle East, in 2006 added a new dimension to the political equation with its bite into the traditional vote-banks of Congress. The party in its maiden poll battle could bag the 3 seats of Katigorah, Badarpur and Hailakandi.

In 2011, AIUDF had to remain content with retaining the lone Katigorah seat held by its General Secretary Ataur Rahman Majharbhuiya. Ironically, BJP had wrested the border constituency of Cachar from Congress in 1991 and maintained the winning spree only to lose to AIUDF in 2001. Silchar the prestigious seat and the cynosure of pollsters was won unseating Congress by BJP also from the year of its turning point, but could not hold for long as it slipped into the fold of INC in 2006 and again in 2011.

There is reason for many heart-burning questions before the leadership of the saffron party as to why it drew a blank in all the five constituencies of Karimganj from where Congress was almost decimated. Of the three constituencies in Hailakandi, the seat of Hailakandi held by BJP first slipped to AIUDF and then to Congress.

Still most shocking was the defeat of Mission Ranjan Das, leader of the party in legislature from North Karimganj and Parimal Shuklabaidya, deputy leader from Dholai(S). The party could not even put up a formidable challenge to the opposition, mainly Congress, in all the seven seats of Cachar.

The May 13th verdict gave Congress a clean sweep in 13 seats with one seat each to the kitty of AGP and AIUDF. AGP has no cause for regret since it has no presence except in Algapur from where Sahidul Alam Chowdhury, a former minister and close confidant of Prafulla Kumar Mahanta has been on a winning spree since 1985 with a break only in 2006, losing to Congress nominee Rahul Roy, son of the powerful leader Gautom Roy, a former minister. AIUDF leadership, on the other hand, is all buoyant for the good performance in Brahmaputra Valley, taking its tally of 12 to 18 in the 126 member Assam Assembly.

The question here is - What went wrong with BJP? After the initial shock and dismay, all the state and district level leaders like Ranjit Dutta, Kabindra Purkayastha MP, Ajit Bhattacharya, Vijay Goel, Assam poll in charge and S Chandrashekhar, looking after the North East, said in unison that the debacle called for serious introspection and analysis to pinpoint the causes. However, keen observers and political analysts have attributed many factors for the dismal performance of the party. With little or no focus on organisational buildup from the booth level, the foot soldiers were missing. Leaders were more involved with deskwork in the party offices than working out strategy to galvanise the workers. The party which once gave a cohesive look appeared in disarray. Internal squabbling, internecine bickering, conflict and clash of egos in the party hierarchy put it on slippery ground. It was a fractured and faction-ridden party that went to the hustings and suffered the expected humiliation.

If the district level leadership was at fault in failing to activate and prepare the party for the poll battle, the state leadership was equally to blame for its lack of pragmatic planning and approach. In most cases, nominations were given to candidates who have no acceptability or winnability. The much-vaunted ‘Gadkari Formula’ on the Bihar pattern on nominations on the basis of association with the party, image, ground-work and resources was ignored. The area of concentration was on making a beeline of as many as 13 leaders from high command Nitin Gadkari, Sushma Swaraj, Varun Gandhi, Arjun Munda, CM of Jharkhand, down to Kiran Maheswari, Arti Mehra and smriti Irani for campaigning across the valley and pressing 4 helicopters to ferry them, a ‘wasteful exercise’.

The Rs 10 crore chopper rides of VIPS, an insider revealed, sent wrong signal and came under severe criticism in many quarters. The party leadership could have taken leafs from Mamata Banerjee who went single handed to build up the party base from the ground level to rip apart the 34 year old Left fortress in West Bengal. Instead, there was too much of oratory and demagoguery from the saffron camp for voters. Congress and AIUDF, on the other hand, laid priority on mass-contact and door to door campaign.

In the final analysis, BJP with a divided house could hardly be a match for the ‘man-power’ and ‘booth point management’ of Congress. BJP leaders have to redefine and reattune their strategy in order to regain the lost ground. There is however some solace for them in the fact that with only 5 seats in its kitty, the party has not suffered any appreciable decline in the percentage of votes secured by it against its share of 2006. The final poll analysis shows that it got a share of 11.43 percent votes, down by only .55 percent the party got in 2006.

Jyoti Lal Chowdhury