The BJP office in Delhi after the results of Assembly elections were declared on Tuesday.
If the top leaders of the BJP have been candid in admitting that they didn't see the big Delhi shock coming, many in the party who have pounded the pavement for weeks, seeking votes for candidates, say they aren't surprised at all.
Naresh Ghai, in his fifties, has for three decades been a grassroots worker with the BJP. In this election, he was assigned to ensure the BJP's loyal voter stepped out to vote. Officially he was a panna pramukh, but till a month or so ago, he was leading a local level committee in Krishna Nagar. For the first time, he says, the BJP introduced the concept of a panna pramukh, the manager of a page-long list of voter names, whose job was to ensure that they supported the BJP. The concept was introduced by BJP chief Amit Shah.
"The concept of panna pramukhs worked only on paper," says Mr Ghai, because the BJP often got basics wrong. Showing NDTV a list of names, he added, "See, Ramesh Wahi died over a year ago. But his name still figures in the list of panna pramukhs. That's how disconnected the party was from reality," he said.
Krishna Nagar in East Delhi has for years supported the BJP. It elected Dr Harsh Vardhan, one of the party's most senior leaders in the capital, five consecutive times. Its sweet spot as a safe seat was why it was assigned by the BJP as the constituency of Kiran Bedi, its Chief Ministerial candidate. Ms Bedi lost her election.
About 90 days before voting took place, he said, the BJP removed mandal in-charge, locality level supervisors meant to encourage one-on-one dialogue with residents, and replaced them with new ones.
Chunmun Bindra, a panna pramukh in the area, says Ms Bedi's defeat was crafted inadvertently, and at least in part by the BJP. "The plan to defeat her was put in place 90 days ago when all the mandal office bearers were changed. The new ones had no clue and they kept loyal workers away from the campaign, didn't give them any work," he complained.
For the BJP, the rub lies not just in the scale of its defeat, but in the fact that in the national election just nine months ago, it had won the equivalent of 60 of Delhi's 70 assembly seats with a 46 per cent vote share. Yesterday, it won three seats with 32 per cent vote share; leaders could take solace from the fact that in a like-to-like comparison - between the last Delhi state election a year ago and yesterday - the party's vote share has declined by just 1 per cent.
BJP workers say statistics don't have to be mined to uncover other glaring mistakes. The BJP declared its candidates just three weeks before voting, allegedly because of deep fissures over who should be allowed to run, even announcing some names on the last day of filing nominations.
"We just didn't have enough time to campaign," said Honey Gupta, the former head of the local youth wing of the party. "Personal egos came in the way of party work. Old timers were ignored, new entrants with no local connect were given importance. It alienated many workers."