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Apathy among the rank and file of the BJP is being seen as another major factor for the decrease in numbers. The cause for his laidback attitude was the belief that since the party is headed towards a grand victory and the Opposition comprises a disparate group, there was no competition for the BJP. This led many workers to take out their ire against a candidate not of their liking, believing a loss in his/her seat is not going to upset the overall result.
The anger was fanned from the declaration of the first list of candidates itself where the BJP retained most of its MPs. A total of 22 Union ministers have lost this time.
“The induction of leaders from other parties into the BJP at the rate of almost one per day in the last few weeks actually dampened the spirit of the die-hard workers who have been toiling for years but were being overlooked. Many of those who joined were promptly given the ticket to contest, further fuelling their anger,” a senior BJP leader told ET.
A quarter of the BJP candidates in this Lok Sabha election were turncoats who had joined from other parties and naturally there was no enthusiasm among the cadre to campaign for the “outsiders”. The BJP had realised from the low voter turnout since the first phase on April 19 that its workers were not venturing out. Even stern messages sent down from the top rung did not have much effect due to the disenchantment. “During one count among us, we found that in a team of around two dozen, only four were dyed-in-the-wool BJP workers. Others had been members of some other party before joining BJP,” a party central office bearer said, preferring anonymity.
An inside joke in the BJP was that there was no need for journalists to go looking for sound bytes of other parties as the turncoats from virtually all of them were present in the ruling party and could express those views.
The fear that the BJP would rewrite the constitution if it gets over 2/3rd majority in the Lower House also worked against it. In Uttar Pradesh, where the party has been reduced to half its previous strength, this is being cited as a major reason. “What else explains the victory of Chandra Shekhar Azad, a Dalit leader, from Nagina (West UP) seat? With BSP appearing inactive in these elections, Dalit votes in seats around Varanasi and Faizabad saw this segment shift its vote to Congress and Samajwadi Party,” a BJP leader, in-charge of seats in this region, told ET.
BSP’s vote share was reduced to 9.39% in 2024 in UP from around 19% in 2019. The BJP would have suffered a rout had BSP and RLD contested in alliance with SP as they did in 2019 when Mayawati’s party had won 10 seats despite the Balakot effect and the Modi-Yogi mass appeal.
The Congress has jumped to a vote share of 9.46% in UP and six seats from its lone victory in Rae Bareli seat won by Sonia Gandhi in 2019. The SP got 33.59% vote share this time.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi won from Varanasi by a margin of 1.5 lakh votes, a big drop from 4.5 lakh vote margin in 2019. The BJP lost Faizabad, where the Ayodhya Ram temple is located, despite the consecration in January. The temple issue did not sway the voters in 2024.
The BJP lost Chandauli, Ghosi, Jaunpur, Basti, Shravasti, Ambedkar Nagar, Sant Kabir Nagar, Salempur, Azamgarh, Ballia, Robertsganj, Lalganj to SP while Congress won Barabanki in the Faizabad and Varanasi regions. Apart from its core Mainpuri-Etawah belt, the SP has won seats in east UP and Bundelkhand region.
The quashing of reservation threat also dented the BJP’s prospects in Bihar.
It also suffered losses in Haryana (Agniveer issue and anti-incumbency against the state government); Maharashtra (where breaking NCP and Shiv Sena has backfired with Sharad Pawar and Udhav Thackeray factions emerging stronger than Ajit Pawar and Eknath Shinde groups); Rajasthan (loss of 11 seats) and Karnataka (loss of 8 seats).
A gain of 11 seats in Odisha, four in Telangana, three in Andhra Pradesh and one in Kerala have mitigated these losses but only in small measure.
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