BJP defeat is good news, says Pakistani daily

The defeat could also dampen the mood as Modi heads to Britain for the first bilateral visit by an Indian leader since 2006.

The statement is an apparent dig at the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s defence of the leadership yesterday after the Parliamentary Board’s review of the performance in which he had said “as far as accountability is concerned the party wins collectively and loses collectively”. “We feel that today’s results – the BJP’s big defeat – could be a material sentiment dampener in Monday’s early trade as this might be perceived as an additional stumbling block to the central government’s reform agenda”, Barclays said in a research note on November 8, 2015.

Prashant Kishor, a native of Bihar, had quit a United Nations health experts job in Africa in 2011 and returned to India to form a group of young professionals who devised the strategy to project Modi as the face of good governance in the 2012 Gujarat polls and last years general elections with resounding success.

A buoyant Nitish Kumar and his foe-turned-ally Lalu Prasad also announced that the Grand Alliance’s victory in Bihar will have national implications and asserted that the results show that people also want a strong alternative at the national level.

“This (reservation) issue has been blown out of proportion and had no impact on voting pattern…What he (Bhagwat) meant was to highlight the capacity building of SC/ST/OBC so that larger number of people could take the benefit of the policy of positive discrimination”, said Mr. Sinha.

“The fact that Modi led the campaign in Bihar, the loss will be considered a personal defeat for the prime minister”.

The Begusarai MP said the rampant use of “unparliamentary language” by Modi and other party leaders during the election campaign harmed the BJP, leading to its defeat. The slaughter of cows, an animal revered by the majority Hindu population, became a major topic.

Jaitley had expressed similar views a day earlier, adding that there was no question of removing Shah as the BJP president because he had led the party to victories in other states after the Lok Sabha battle. “This is a decisive mandate against divisiveness in favor of development”, he said.

Gogoi attacked the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the centre and said it has done gross injustice to Assam after coming to power. It had won only four last time. Here are five quotes made by prominent leaders that made headlines.