BJP paid for ignoring cadres, poorly managing polls: RSS

New Delhi: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mentor of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), feels that ignoring grassroots level workers has proved costly for the party in the Delhi and Rajasthan elections.

RSS spokesman Ram Madhav refused to comment on the poll results Monday, saying: "We don't comment on election results."

However, several senior RSS functionaries, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the BJP paid dearly for imposing leaders from the top and ignoring the local party cadres while distributing tickets.

While the BJP failed to oust the Congress in Delhi, it lost power in Rajasthan. The BJP, however, retained its rule in Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh.

"In fact, the BJP leadership should not rejoice over its performance even in Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh. In Madhya Pradesh, they lost a considerable number of seats and in Chattisgarh too, the party just scraped through," a senior RSS functionary said.

"The results are also an indication that the BJP has to do a lot of hard work in terms of strengthening its organisational structure at the grassroots level. Our feedback is that poor election management at the polling booth level has cost the BJP dearly, especially in Delhi, while ignoring committed party workers proved costly in Rajasthan," he added.

RSS sources said that after the debacle of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the 2004 general elections, the RSS had decided to distance itself from actively helping the BJP during elections.

"Earlier, RSS cadres played a major role in managing polling booths during elections and this helped the BJP, but now our cadres don't do that. It seems, that the BJP somehow has not yet been able to make up for the absence of RSS cadres," the sources said.

"We would continue to maintain our distance from actively helping the BJP in electoral politics," another senior RSS functionary said.

"Our priority is to strengthen the RSS and its other frontal organisations at the grassroots level as we realised during the NDA's rule that there are too many complusions of electoral politics and it hurts more than serving the cause of Hindutva," the functionary added.