The outcome of by-elections are sometimes more symbolic than their impact on the “house” to which fresh names are added.

And, as the by-poll from Bawana to the Delhi Assembly suggests, it is often the loser who is affected more than the winner. For the BJP’s failing to wrest the seat from the Aam Aadmi Party serves to puncture egos inflated by retaining control of the three civic bodies and the victory in the previous Assembly by-poll in Rajouri Gardens.

To which the BJP was quick to add AAP’s boasts coming unstuck in Goa and Punjab ~ where it did relegate the AkaliBJP combine to second spot. In disproving those who predicted its doom, Arvind Kejriwal’s maverick outfit did regain something of the swagger it flaunted after its routing the BJP 67-3 in 2015 ~ the first major poll since the Modi-Shah combine came to dominate national politics. Whether a single by-poll suffices for the Delhi electorate to live up to its reputation of being highly sensitive to shifts in the political winds it is too early to determine, yet the BJP cannot take lightly its losing the Bawana exercise by some 24,000 votes and seeing quite a drop in the vote-share it secured in other recent local forays.

What must worry the BJP is that Bawana points to voters having had their fill of the politics in which the party indulged ~ its losing candidate was an AAP turncoat. It also confirms that the local BJP leadership is not all that it was cranked up to be after the municipal polls. Does that endorse Kejriwal’s qualities of leadership?

He had campaigned extensively, his credibility was on the line. There is small need to be impressed by Kejriwal’s contention that the use of the “paper trail” system confirmed the charge that the BJP-led government was rigging elections ~ that system had been employed in Rajouri Garden too.

What is more significant is that this time around AAP boxed within its limitations: it treated Bawana as the by-poll that it was, and did not attempt to convert it into a referendum on the acche din claim. It is for the BJP to reflect on whether possible anti-incumbency at the national level ~ demonetisation, GST etc ~ had a negative fallout. Or did over-confidence result in complacency? The Congress remains reduced to feasting on left-overs.

After yet another failure to find a slot in the Old Secretariat it has been forced to make much of an improvement in its vote-share ~ a trickledown reflection of Jairam Ramesh’s body-blow about “sultans without a Sultanate”.

When will the Gandhis admit that the party, under their leadership, is tottering? There is work to be done, at home and not in Norway