At the moment, the consensus in the party is that over-confidence and too much dependence on the “charismatic” personalities of the chief minister Mr. Shivraj Singh Chauhan and Ms. Sushma Swaraj, who was in charge of the state, was responsible for the reverses. Blaming the Centre for everything that went wrong in the state, failure to field young faces and even more so, failure to punish those who were openly sabotaging the poll effort of the party candidates also contributed to the reverses.

Few are ready to give credit for the dramatic improvement in the Congress' performance (it had never won as many seats in the state since 1991) to the state leadership of the party. In fact, during campaigning, many senior party leaders had blamed the state party chief Mr. Suresh Pachauri of not putting the party machinery into poll mode. Hardly any co-ordination was visible between the party leaders. The campaign committee never met. Most of the party satraps confined themselves to their own zones of influence. AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh was the only leader who campaigned in several constituencies, including Rajgarh from where his younger brother Laxman Singh was contesting on a BJP ticket. The junior Mr. Singh had won in 2004 on BJP ticket but he lost this time. It seems that the credit for trebling (from 4 to 12) the Congress' tally in MP should go only to the electors.

How lethargic and lack-lustre the Congress campaign was can be judged by the fact that the state Congress leadership even failed to counter the charges levelled by the BJP. The BJP leadership mounted an aggressive attack on the Congress, accusing the Central government of discriminating against the state. The Central government was accused of starving the state of supplies of coal needed to run Thermal power plants. The Chief Minister led two statewide “yatras” (Coal yatra and Nyaya yatra) to highlight the Congress' policy of alleged discrimination. But it appears that, what political observers described as “gimmicks”, failed to impress the people.

During the election campaign and even before that the BJP leadership was claiming that its tally will increase from 24 to 26 or even 27. It did not give the Congress more than 2 or 3 seats. However, the electorate thought otherwise and the Congress not only managed to retain its 4 seats but also wrested 8 others from the BJP.

The Congress has made successful inroads into several BJP bastions of yore. Mandsaur was one of them. Dr. LN Pandey had been winning Mandsaur, an opium-growing area, for the BJP for the last eight elections. The BJP cadres wanted a change—a newer, fresher face. However, the leadership did not agree. The Congress nominated 36-year-old Meenakshi Natrajan to take on the 81-year-old Pandey. A member of Rahul Gandhi's core group, this was Meenakshi's first election. She had first made her mark as a bright Youth Congress leader and later as Vice chairperson of the Nehru Yuva Kendra. Despite being a South Indian, she defeated Mr. Pandey by a respectable margin.

Similarly, Congress candidate Premchand Guddu defeated Dr. Satyanarain Jatia in Ujjain. Mr. Jatia was a minister of state in the Vajpayee government and was considered invincible. Interestingly, Premchand Guddu had lost in the assembly elections held in November last year but managed to trounce Jatia just five months later. This only shows to what extent Jatia's popularity graph had fallen.

In the Indore constituency, a section of BJP men wanted change but the party chose to re-nominate Ms. Sumitra Mahajan, who has been winning from Indore since 1989. This time she too managed to win but her victory margin fell from 2.5 lakh to just 11, 000. Her poll effort was sabotaged by her own party men. And the saboteurs were led by Mr. Kailash Vijayvargiya, a powerful minister. Now Ms. Mahajan's supporters want Vijayvargiya to be dropped from the ministry. Addressing a rally to felicitate Ms. Mahajan at Indore, Satyanarain Sattan, a powerful BJP leader and co-ordinator of Ms. Mahajan's poll campaign demanded strict action against them, Sattan accused Vijayvargiya and others of amassing wealth.

Similar charges of sabotage are also being voiced from other constituencies that the BJP lost. The constituencies from where the BJP sitting members of the Lok Sabha have been unseated are Rajgarh (Laxman Singh), Dewas (Thawar Chand Gehlot), Ujjain (Satyanarain Jatia), Khandwa (Nandkumar Chauhan), Hoshangabad (Rampal Singh),. Mandsaur (LN Pande), Mandla (Faggan Singh Kulaste), Dhar (Chattarsingh Darbar) and Rewa (Chandramani Tripathi)

Among the successful Congress candidates who will be entering the Lok Sabha for the first time are Meenakshi Natrajan (Mandsaur), Prem Chand Guddu (Ujjain), Uday Pratap Singh (Hoshangabad), Rajesh Nandini Singh (Shahdol), Bashori Singh (Mandla), Narayan Singh Amlaha (Rajgarh) and Sajjan Singh Verma (Dewas).

The Rewa seat, which was held by the BJP, has been annexed by the BSP. All the three Union ministers from the state — Kamal Nath, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Kantilal Bhuria — have been re-elected. Kamal Nath was returned from Chinndwara for the eighth time, Bhuria from Ratlam for the fourth time and Scindia from Guna from the third time.

Yashodhararaje Scindia, another scion of the Scindia family has won from Gwalior on a BJP ticket for the second successive time. Unfortunately not a single Muslim, Christian or Sikh could win the election from Madhya Pradesh. The winners include two women.

Besides the local factors, the all-India factors that seem to have influenced the voters include projection of Narendra Modi as the Prime ministerial candidate. Modi's projection came at a time when the Supreme Court had ordered the SIT to probe his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots. It made Muslims panicky and they voted en masse for the Congress.

The BJP did try to terrorise the Hindus by quoting Congress's failure to combat terrorism. This propaganda misfired when during the elections itself, the United States of America told Pakistan that India no longer posed a threat to it and asked it to shift its troops from the Indian border to the Afghan border. This was a major diplomatic success of the Union government.

It is difficult to say why the people voted for the Congress despite rising prices and ill-effects of recession hitting them hard. Observers say that the people were happy about the manner in which these crises were dealt with by the Union Government. (IPA)