Triumph and disaster

As celebrations at the Bharatiya Janata Party headquarters at Ashok Road reached a crescendo, with results firmly establishing the victory trend, the Congress office at Akbar Road was enveloped in silence. Even the Youth Congress office, a couple of buildings away, looked deserted.   

After hours of carnival-like festivities, the BJP HQ, barricaded by hundreds of police personnel for ‘Prime Minister-like security’, settled to serious business once the party was sure it was forming the government at the Centre. Addressing a packed press conference, national president Rajnath Singh attributed the win to Narendra Modi’s leadership, as well as the party’s focus on development and good governance.  

“After 1984, this is the first time a party has got a clear majority,” said Singh, accompanied on the dais by party strategist and Modi’s righthand man, Amit Shah, as well as Ravi Shankar Prasad and Venkaiah Naidu. Singh dodged all questions on his role in the government or those of Sushma Swaraj and L K Advani. He dismissed the talk around Swaraj sulking as “unsubstantiated”. There was no word on why BJP star and likely finance minister Arun Jaitley, who contested from Amritsar, lost to Congress’ Amarinder Singh, in spite of the BJP wave. Jaitley, sure of an “easy win”, did not respond to a text message from Business Standard.

Incidentally, 9, Ashok Road, adjacent to the BJP office, where around 3,000  volunteers were busy doing the victory laps and distributing ghee-laden ladoos, saffron in colour, is the official residence of Jaitley, though one he’s never occupied.

Whether it was the 20,000 cups of NaMo-branded tea offered to visitors through the day or thousands of crates of kesar-kulfi ice-cream in the making, marigold showers along the stretch or decorated elephants waiting for a procession,  fireworks during daylight or bands in full swing, the wedding-like do’s had been planned to the final detail. If the Congress had made plans, too, it abandoned everything as reality hit it.

After the strict security of the early morning, the road leading to its office became free for all as it became clear the party was indeed losing after a decade in power. Ajay Makan, Randeep Singh Surjewala, Satyavrat Chaturvedi, Rajeev Shukla and Shakeel Ahmad, present to respond to media queries, quietly left by the afternoon. Much later, Sonia and Rahul Gandhi briefly spoke to the media to concede defeat, hours after outgoing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had congratulated Modi.   
While Chaturvedi said it was the “yearning for change that led to the defeat”, the large white canvas outsidethe BJP office was getting filled fast with thousands of comments from Modi followers as the day progressed: “Modi rocks”, “Nation with Modi”, “Greatest leader of India”.