The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has called the Madhya Pradesh civic election results “historic”. However, coming into the election with all 16 incumbent mayors, it lost nearly half of those, including in traditional strongholds such as Gwalior, Jabalpur and Rewa.
However, since these elections were being dubbed as semi-finals for the Assembly elections scheduled 14 months from now, the score line – and the fact that margins were close in at least two cities -- has given the Congress also some hope.
Despite the official BJP line of “historic victory”, there have been murmurs of introspection on why so many mayoral seats were lost. BJP leaders point to how the party lost both the mayoral posts in the Gwalior-Chambal belt (Gwalior and Morena) that allowed Congress to take a dig at its former member Jyotiraditya Scindia, who switched loyalties two years ago.
