Days after Lal Kishenchand Advani was declared the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate for prime ministership for the Lok Sabha elections slated to be held in February 2009 unless Parliament is dissolved earlier, massive defeats in two bypolls in Khargone for Lok Sabha and the Sanver MLA seat sent the party top brass in a tizzy.
Both the seats were wrested by the Congress party.
"The defeat calls for introspection and to find out the reasons why it lost in Khargone, which had been returning the party nominess to the Parliament since 1957 onwards barring 1984," Pyarelal Khandelwanl told rediff.com in New Delhi hours after the victory margin of the two respective seats was known.
"The defeat is much bigger if we count 40,000 votes that were taken by the candidate fielded by Uma Bharti's party," a senior leader admitted, but would not say if this was good enough for reinducting Bharti to the party fold and replace chief minister of Madhya Pradesh Shivraj Singh Chauhan.
"It is too early to say anything whether there should be a new chief minister. As far as Bharti is concerned, she does not know what she is saying today and what she would be saying tomorrow," he said.
In Sanver the BJP lost the MLA seat by over 9,000 votes.
Congress leaders have demanded Chauhan's resignation. Particularly, former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh Digvijay Singh, who is the happiest man in the Congress party.
