Visiting Fellow Praveen Chakravartywrites in The Indian Express: "Alteration in the electoral landscape had a larger impact on BJP’s UP bypoll performance than its Hindutva campaign."

Excerpts below:

"... There is unprecedented unanimity among political observers that the BJP’s straying from the theme of development in the Lok Sabha elections to a theme of communal division in the bypolls was the primary cause for the party’s losses... An analysis of the assembly data, segment-wise, of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls... reveals that the distortion in the electoral landscape caused by the coming together of all major opposition parties for the by-elections is more explanatory of the BJP’s reversal of fortune in 11 constituencies in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar than any other conjecture — whether development or identity."