NEW DELHI: The Haryana and Maharashtra Assembly elections have become extremely important not just for the BJP, but its President Amit Shah who needs to win these to ward off the flak he and his star campaigners in Uttar Pradesh are facing from within and without.

BJP Bihar leader Sushil Modi has fired the first salvo by lambasting Adityanath and his ‘love jihad’ campaign maintaining that he would not have allowed this in his state. He said that the state BJP would have “contradicted Adityanath” if he had made the same statements in Bihar as he did in UP.

Shah himself has asked party workers not to be “depressed” promising victory in the state Assembly elections. However, given the resistance within the party to his elevation as president at the insistence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi there are several leaders, including many marginalised by him in states like UP, who are not supportive of the BJP president at this juncture. Tickets were alloted by Shah in UP for these byelections, with leaders like Rajnath Singh and Kalyan Singh being kept out of the picture altogether. State leaders insist that this was also one of the reasons why the party lost in eight of the 11 seats in UP.

Shah has this heavy handed style of functioning that was visible outside Gujarat for the first time in UP when he set up his own team of campaigners and election managers, placing the senior party leaders on the periphery. Seniors like Kalraj Mishra and Lalji Tandon were specifically upset, with both losing their constituencies and the power of decision making in the process. His new team of campaigners subsequently included Gorakhpur MP Adityanath now notorious for his hate speech.’Love jihad’ was subsequently made central to the BJP campaign before the by elections.

The BJP president has now tried to put a gloss on the defeat in the by elections and at a meeting in Gorta village in Bidar district on the Maharashtra-Karnataka border told party workers, “Maharashtra and Haryana elections are on October 15, counting is on October 19, I want to tell all my party workers for victory celebrations on October 19.”

“Some election results have come. Opposition is feeling overwhelmed. They feel that something very good has happened because BJP has been defeated in a few places. But they can’t see that we have opened our account in Assam, they can’t see we have won in Bengal,” he added.

However, a sign of nervousness was visible in the hitherto adamant BJP blinking first in its face off with the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra over seat allocation. After the bypoll results the Shiv Sena was the first to ask the BJP to “stop flying.” Subsequently not just Shah but also former BJP president Nitin Gadkari has met party leaders in Maharashtra in a bid to arrive at some consensus. Initial indications are that the BJP is preparing to whittle down its list from the 135 seats it was insisting on contesting to 119 as being demanded by the Shiv Sena that is clear about contesting the lion share of the 288 Assembly seats in the state.

The by election results have placed the Shiv Sena in an advantageous position in the bargaining that has been going on for a while now between the two allies, and has created considerable bad blood. More so after Shah asked his workers to ensure that the BJP swept to power and formed the government on its own. Since then the Sena started projecting its leader Uddhav Thackeray as the chief minister candidate for the state, much to the ire of the BJP that is not being able to counter this as it does not have any one candidate for the post as yet.

The carping within the BJP has begun with fingers being pointed at Shah for being too authoritarian for comfort. Given his inclination to take all decisions, this is not without basis, with the party president not being known as one to delegate responsibility without being in control. His initial remarks at Bidar are not being seen as reflective of a change in approach, with the BJP now looking at Maharashtra and Haryana to revive its sagging fortunes.