Weighed down by anti-incumbency, the Bharatiya Janata Party heavily banked on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's personal appeal to enable it to sail through in the assembly elections but it was not to be.
Modi addressed as many as 19 meetings and held six roadshows in an aggressive campaign to shore up the party's prospects in the May 10 assembly elections.
In addition to BJP president J P Nadda, several of the party's top guns including Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had campaigned in the state.
The BJP had won 104 seats in the previous elections in 2018 but this time could manage only 65.
Asked whether the Modi and Shah factor did not work in this election, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said there are various factors for this outcome and one can speak about it after a thorough analysis.
Bommai said the Congress' 'much organised' election strategy might have been one of the major reasons for its win.
Some party leaders admitted in private that a combative Congress was ahead in the 'narratives front', noting that it had relentlessly targeted the Bommai government on corruption issues months before the elections.
The BJP failed to counter the Congress allegations on corruption effectively, another BJP leader said.
"A large number of women in rural areas seem to have voted for the Congress as price rise was an issue, particularly the cooking gas prices," a BJP functionary said.
Another BJP leader said the party could have handled the ticket distribution strategy better.
The party denied tickets to former chief minister Jagadish Shettar and former deputy chief minister Laxman Savadi, both of whom then left the party and joined the Congress.
The pre-poll 'guarantees' announced by the Congress promising free power, rice and unemployment doles also tilted a significant section of the voters towards the Congress, BJP sources said.
Another BJP leader said the party gave tickets to 75 new faces to combat anti-incumbency but some of them were tainted and did not have a clean image.
