TNN
 
New Delhi, Dec 9: One of the messages from these assembly elections is that terrorism is not a partisan issue. The voters refused to hold the ruling dispensation solely responsible for the spate of terror attacks. Nor did they swallow BJP's claim that it would beat back this challenge to the country.

For BJP, which turned continuing terrorist violence into a major campaign plank — with grim advertisements and hoardings coming up after the Mumbai attack — the outcome sounds a note of caution and should force it to re-think its campaign for the Lok Sabha poll.

For the Congress, which was fearing the worst following the Mumbai attack, the results are reassuring — the spurt in terrorist violence has not been stapled on to it. Besides, it won't be under pressure to take dramatic steps to be seen as countering terror — steps such as hanging convicted terrorist Afzal Guru in a hurry or step up on the sabre-rattling against Pakistan.

Two of the three states that went to the polls after the Mumbai attack have rejected BJP's "soft-on-terror" charge against the Congress, with its defeat in Delhi, in particular, marking the failure of the last-minute effort to capitalise on the audacious jihadi attack. After the Mumbai attack, Congress, save diehard Shiela supporters, had virtually given up on Delhi.

The win in Madhya Pradesh cannot be attributed to any popular anger against Congress because of the jihadi assault on Mumbai. The BJP was favourite to win, in any case. Besides, polling in MP on November 27 had got underway hours before the full impact of the terror strike sank into large parts of the electorate in this sparsely populated state.

While terrorism was a key part of the BJP's campaign arsenal for all the four states from the very beginning, in the Capital it trumped everything else in the last 48 hours with the party moving fast to advertise the November 26 attack on Mumbai as validation of its terror campaign theme.

It put up hoardings, inserted newspaper ads and sent out lakhs of text messages in the hope that this would make up for the listless campaign the party had run till then. The higher voter turnout in middle-class colonies on polling day was interpreted to suggest that the tactic had paid off. The results show it was all self-delusion.

While the Rajasthan defeat was caused by multiple local factors, the failure to wrest Delhi from Congress had, in a very large measure, to do with poor traction of the terror card. The issue would have played well for the BJP here because of a number of factors — frequent terrorist strikes in the city, a sizeable constituency receptive to Hindutva themes, to name a few.

Any honest audit by BJP should include a few key question — did the party appear too eager to cash in on terrorist attacks? Did this lend credence to Congress charge that BJP was needlessly politicising terror? And did the party's defence of the accused in Hindu blasts in Malegaon hurt the party's message of it giving no quarters to terrorism?