Council poll: Blame game on in BJP

LUCKNOW: Coming as a setback to the BJP, the UP Council poll results may intensify internal squabbling within the party as it has already triggered off a ''blame game''.
Although the party has termed the outcome as ''marksheet'' of misuse of official machinary by the ruling Samajwadi Party, but party workers have taken it as failure of the state leadership.In the last elections, the party had won 20 out of total 36 seats and two candidates supported by it too had won.
What has caused more embarrassment to the BJP camp is that all the rebel candidates, who had contested on the Samajwadi Party tickets, made it to the UP Council. The party could not even retain the prestigious Lucknow-Unnao seat from where rebel Ajit Singh won again.
Similarly, the party candidate Shivendra Pratap Singh lost to rebel Bharat Tripathi in Sitapur. Akshay Pratap Singh (Pratapgarh) and Ganesh Shanker Pandey (Gorakhpur-Maharjganj), two independents who were supported by the BJP in the last elections too retained their seats but with the support of Samajwadi Party this time.
"The state leadership failed to deliever goods again. At the time of ticket distribution, there was a race among senior state leaders to ensure tickets for their nominees but none of them exteded support during campaigning," fumes a party office-bearer.
Nominee of party state chief Vinay Katiyar from Faizabad Veerbhanu Pratap Singh, whose selection had drawn flak from many quarters, also lost. The only solace for the party was that it wrested the Mirzapur-Sonebhadra seat from Congress when its candidate Shyam Singh won.
Out of 20 seats it had won last time, the party could retain only four. Rakesh Pratap Singh (Rae Bareli), Dr Kailash Singh (Gazipur), Udainath Singh alias Chulbul Singh (Varanasi) and Manish Jaiswal (Basti-Sidharthnagar) retained their seats to salvage the party''s prestige to some exetent. Result on Basti-Sidhartnagar seat has not been officially declared yet.
Party workers feel that if the party senior leaders had made a concerted efforts, the debacle could have been avoided. "No intiative was taken by state leaders to seek time from the prime minister when he was here on November 27 to hold a meeting in his presence of party candidates and BJP members. It would have certainly made a lot of difference on the outcome," stated a party general secretary.
Those crossing swords with one another may now come out in open now after the debacle and it may also give a chance to Katiyar''s adversaries to put hurdles in his re-election as state president. But Katiyar has shifted the blame on ruling coalition saying that his fears of irregularities came true.
"Ballot boxes were changed overnight at many places. Even candidates of alliance partners lost. Had it been a free poll, the BJP would have retained its seats," he clarified.