Sena taunts ally after bypoll loss, says BJP needs to pull up its socks

After being checkmated by the Rashtriya Janata Dal-Janata Dal-United-Congress alliance in the Bihar bypoll, Bharatiya Janata Party ally Shiv Sena on Tuesday said that the ‘Mahayuti’ needs to pull up its socks and refrain from gloating over the ‘Modi wave’ to fight the upcoming Maharashtra assembly elections.

“We have to accept that the RJD-JDU-Congress combine won six seats while the BJP could win only four. People have shown that there is a difference between Lok Sabha and state assembly elections. This difference should be taken very seriously,” the Sena said in an edit in its party mouthpiece Saamana’.

“Seeing the bypoll results, it seems clear that the BJP-Shiv Sena led ‘Mahayuti’ has to pull up its socks and get to work for the upcoming elections in Maharashtra,” it said.

Warning against completely relying on the Modi wave, Sena said that state elections cannot be won on mere talk. “People want a change of power in Maharashtra. But we cannot win elections by only talking about winning. (Narendra) Modi has been given a strong mandate to head the country. But the factors that come into play during state elections are different,” the Sena said.

The edit added that the BJP should “learn a lesson” from the results of the bypolls and “self-introspect” on what went wrong.

Three months after its spectacular showing in Lok Sabha polls, the BJP on Monday received a jolt in the assembly bye-elections, suffering a 4-6 defeat at the hands of the RJD-JD-U-Congress alliance in Bihar and yielding two strongholds to Congress in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh.

In Punjab, the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal and Congress won one seat each.

Out of the 18 seats in four states for which bypolls were held on August 21, Congress and its allies won 10 while seven went to BJP and one to its ally SAD.