BJP’s Parliamentary Board, its top decision-making body, will meet today to analyse its rout in Bihar assembly polls, a second humiliating defeat in a row for the party after Delhi assembly election. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to attend the meet in which almost all top party leaders, including its chief Amit Shah, will be present. More than the defeat, it is its scale that has stung the party as it was expecting a cohesive social arithmetic in its favour against the grand alliance of JD(U)-RJD-Congress.
Already some Bihar leaders, including Hukumdeo Narayan Yadav and Ashwini Choubey, have said that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s quota comments cost the party while there is also a feeling in a section the decision of not projecting a chief ministerial face gave Nitish Kumar an advantage. Some BJP leaders felt that the “social combination” of the winning grand alliance could have caused NDA’s defeat.