BJP's mantra: Sit tight, do nothing!

Here's an update from Uttarakhand: Chief Minister BC Khanduri has managed to cling on to his chair. So, all that talk of 'moral responsibility' was so much bunkum and no more. The MLAs are a divided lot. Most of them are unhappy with Khanduri for a variety of reasons, all of which coalesced to cause the BJP's rout in Uttarakhand. But possibly many would want the status quo to be maintained lest they lose their own chairs! Person, power, perquisites, party. That's the new order in the BJP. So much for its high falutin claim that the party comes before individual.

Yashwant Sinha has been upfront with his comment on the election results. "We were not clearly focussed on issues, and we need to define our ideological line." The issues were there, staring the BJP in the face. But it went off on a tangent, hunting for hidden gold in Swiss banks, armed with entries culled from Wikipedia.

In the middle of the campaign, a bright spark came up with a mind-boggling idea: Every BPL family will be supplied with a smart phone when the BJP comes to power! There was no shortage of 'vision' -- strategists were in a trance -- all of which became the focus of the campaign. The issues were ignored.

Arun Jaitley told mediapersons on Friday (May 22), "The biggest challenge for the BJP is to learn from the verdict and conduct itself as a responsible Opposition." Learn what? But you can't ask that question as it would discomfit a whole lot of people and leave the flatterers in the Leader's court distraught.

Rajnath Singh has ruled out any formal, structured inquiry into the BJP's pathetic performance. Instead, according to him, leaders will 'quietly' visit constituencies and get 'reports from the ground'. And then the party will 'quietly' bury the findings of those sent to snoop and sniff around.

The last time the BJP did any honest introspection and made an effort to study the party's performance in a general election was after the 1984 poll when the BJP was reduced to two seats. That report helped the party to strategise and leap frog to the frontline of Indian politics. Others may have forgotten about that report, surely LK Advani hasn't.

The lotus-eaters are content to dream of 2014...