•Shekhar Gupta: What explains the BJP’s disaster in Uttar Pradesh?

Uttar Pradesh was a stronghold of BJP earlier. Since then, certain weaknesses have crept into our party and the caste politics of Mayawati and Mulayam Singh have gained importance. We lost UP because of our organisational weakness—that is my primary assessment. I do not attribute it to any one individual. In this country, there is another problem: one of the reasons why the focus was on Varun Gandhi is that there is a weakness for dynasty in this country. I was once asked to enumerate the Congress’s strengths. I gave three: one, the people of this country still innocently believe that the present Congress is the same Congress that brought freedom to this country; secondly, many people innocently believe that these Gandhis are related to Mahatma Gandhi; thirdly, in a democracy, dynasty in nasty, but it’s tasty to a considerable proportion of people in this country.

•Shekhar Gupta: You were fourth in the Uttar Pradesh tally. Were you shocked by the results and if so, how do you analyse the loss?

We were definitely shocked, we were hoping for a better performance. Congress overtaking the BJP really shocked us. One reason was the wholesale shift of the minority vote to the Congress, but that is not the sole reason—our own failures are also there. We must analyse and then take correctives. You can’t have a readymade response without analysing in detail and then understanding in depth what went wrong. We have to give UP priority.

... contd.