BJP to hold booth-level analysis of slim margin seats won or lost in Uttar Pradesh

Based on the analysis, timeline for which is yet to be decided, the party may go for organisational changes in the state unit if it deems necessary, senior party functionaries told ET.

“Earlier also the seats that we have lost or won/ lost by slim margins have got special focus, and we will continue with the exercise for the present results, too,” Vijay Bahadur Pathak, state party vice president, told ET.

This exercise helped the party win 26 of the 72 seats it had lost in 2017 this time around, he said.

In the recently concluded elections, 18 BJP candidates lost by less than 5,000 votes and six of them lost by less than 1,000 votes.

“Right now, the focus is on government formation, but we will do a booth-wise analysis of the results once we take up the exercise,” another senior party functionary said. “We do not function like Congress, which dumped all its state presidents…in a way, making them take responsibility of its defeat. We will go to the booth level to uncover the reasons for the defeat, fix accountability and make organisational changes, if required,” he said.

The party’s performance has been particularly underwhelming in Purvanchal where BJP and its allies had won 80 out of 107 seats in 2017. The tally dropped to 63 this time.

In fact, along the Purvanchal expressway, which was being showcased as an exemplar of BJP’s development model in the backward eastern UP, rival Samajwadi Party and its allies swept four out of the eight districts the highway passes through, namely, Ambedkarnagar, Ghazipur, Mau and Azamgarh, losing only one seat in Mau.

SP also plans to soon do a constituency level analysis of the results where feedback will be sought from ground level workers. .