The three most gaping holes in the BJP’s sinking ship have been Kashi, Mathura and Ayodhya. The party has been wiped out from these constituencies where it held sway for 13 years Kashi (Varanasi LS seat): In 1999, BJP’s Shankar Prasad Jayaswal had defeated Congress’s Rajesh Mishra by over 50,000 votes. It was sweet revenge for Mishra this time when he defeated the sitting BJP MP. The BJP has blamed it on the anti-incumbency factor. Faizabad (Ayodhya): Though star campaigners like L.K. Advani and PM Vajpayee addressed rallies here, they failed to repeat the magic for the BJP a third time. In 1999, state chief Vinay Katiyar had sailed through here, riding high on the Ram temple wave. This time, he avoided contesting from here and BJP had to field a new face, Ram Bhakt alias Lallo Singh, who proved no match for BSP’s Mitrasen Yadav. Mathura: BJP has been pushed to number three slot here. Manvendra Singh (Congress) has won the seat by over 38,000 votes, followed by BSP’s Ch. Laxmi Narain and BJP’s Ch. Tejvir Singh. The sitting BJP MP has polled only half of the 2.1 lakh votes he got in 1999.
