As far as the Congress is concerned, albeit the party has lost Betul by-election, it has given a tough fight to the BJP notwithstanding the constituency being a BJP fiefdom. The poor show of the BJP in the by-poll is reflected from its percentage increase in its vote as compared to the last Lok Sabha election.

Going by the total number of votes polled by both the BJP and the Congress in Betul Lok Sabha by-election, it appears that the Congress has given an encouraging performance in terms of increase in its share of votes, which has gone up from 130467 votes in 2004 to 265,234 votes in 2008.

On the other hand, there has been a very marginal increase in the total number of votes polled by the BJP candidate. As against 288007 votes polled by late Vijay Khandelwal of the BJP in 2004 Lok Sabha election in Betul parliamentary seat, the BJP candidate in the current by-poll, has polled 300,674 votes, which is far below as compared to increase in votes of the Congress candidate. Moreover, the votes polled by the BJP in the current by-poll, is also less than 1999 Lok Sabha elections, when the party candidate Ramesh Bais had managed to get a total of 354736 votes.

In totality, the by-poll result reflects a comparitively poor performance by the BJP, notwithstanding the fact this constituency was being represented by the party in the Lok Sabha for the past four consecutive terms. For the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Madhya Pradesh, Betul Lok Sabha by-election had been termed as a semi-final to the assembly elections due in the state in October this year.

Learning a lesson from its recent debacles in Assembly by-elections, the BJP had left no effort unturned to ensure the victory of its candidate Hemant Khandelwal in Betul Lok Sabha by-election. Apart from Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, his battery of ministers and state BJP president Narendra Tomar, the national-level BJP leaders including Sumshma Swaraj, Venkaiyah Naidu, Hema Malini, Prabhat Jha had criss-crossed the constituency to woo electorates in favour of the BJP candidate but `non-performance' of some of its MLAs and a palpable anger of electorates especially in Harda assembly segment against the party's sitting MLA and state minister, Kamal Patel, seem to have boomeranged on the party, if the by-poll result is anything to go by.

Neverthless, victory is always sweet, particularly, after the party's ignominious defeats in the spate of by-elections which the state witnessed in the recent past. Assembly elections in the state are hardly six months away. It is high time the Bharatiya Janata Party think-tanks make a retrospection of the performance of not only the state government but also of those party MLAs whose nonperformance and alleged indulgence in `corrupt' practices cost the party dearly, particularly in Khargone and Betul Lok Sabha by-elections.

Krishna K Jha