Post Election analysis - BJP forgot Delhi often comes via Lucknow

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/clicklit/entry/bjp-forgot-the-roadmap-delhi

We all know that the road to Delhi is via Lucknow”, Atal Bihari Vajpayee reminded the national council of the BJP in December 2006. Even if he does usually speak a tad softly, a point as basic as that mustn’t have been that difficult to catch. A pity, then, they didn’t pay him much heed.
Contrary to the widely shared opinion, going by television debates, that the BJP’s primary error was its sustained campaign against Manmohan Singh, I don’t think the BJP really made an gigantic electoral blunder by picking a ‘negative campaign’. Or by attacking Manmohan. Or in its choice of alliances, or the lack of them. The BJP got the plot fundamentally wrong the day it got so enamoured of its own success in social experimentation, that it began to equate its electoral epicentre with Gujarat — forgetting the fact that it had been steadily, irretrievably, losing it completely in its actual epicentre, UP.