'Confident about Uttar Pradesh. Don't see anti-BJP coalition there," said Rajnath Singh.
The blame for BJP's loss in the Bihar assembly elections cannot be put on the Prime Minister, senior BJP leader and Union home minister Rajnath Singh told NDTV today.
"Winning and losing is part of the game... one cannot pin the blame on the PM," Mr Singh said. The statement of Mohan Bhagwat, the chief of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh -- the ideological mentor of BJP -- on a rethink on reservation policy did not affect the results either, he added.
"We couldn't understand the mood (in the state). Social equations were against us in Bihar. I have addressed at least 50 rallies," Mr Singh said.
The BJP was trounced in the elections by the Grand Alliance of Nitish Kumar's JD(U), Lalu Prasad's RJD and the Congress. The NDA it leads wound up with only 58 of the 243 assembly seats, in comparison to the whopping 178 of the Grand Alliance.
The gleeful winners have insisted that the mandate was a comment on the 18-month performance of the Narendra Modi government - who himself had led the NDA campaign - and what they called the rising intolerance in the country. There is also a view that Mr Bhagwat's comment on reservation had caused a polarisation of the backward caste votes.
The BJP, whose 12 top leaders, including the Prime Minister, held a meeting yesterday to analyse the defeat, attributed it to its failure to gauge the effectiveness of the Grand Alliance.
"We were wrong in thinking the Grand Alliance won't be able to consolidate votes due to other small and regional parties," Union finance minister Arun Jaitley had said after the meeting. He, however said the leaders who made comments "deflecting from our main theme of development" had contributed to the party's humiliating defeat.
Regarding the debate on intolerance, Mr Singh said, "I still feel dialogue is best way out. I am willing to sit down with the intellectuals who are talking about intolerance and hear them out."
He also added that he was confident about winning the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, which will be held in 2017. "I am confident about UP. I don't see an anti-BJP coalition in UP," the minister said.