Patna: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders have admitted an “overdose” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rallies led to the heavy defeat of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the Bihar elections.

The assessment comes a fortnight after the BJP-led alliance was badly trounced in the state polls by the Grand Secular Alliance headed by chief minister Nitish Kumar.

Modi alone had addressed a total of 30 election rallies in the state, virtually turning the poll campaign into a PM-versus-CM affair.

BJP leaders made these observations at a two-day meeting of the party, which concluded here on Thursday. The meeting, attended by party officials and heads of various fronts, was held to review the party’s defeats in the elections as also to chart a future course of action to galvanise the party’s rank and file.

“We lost because of an ‘overdose’ of PM rallies. As most of party leaders and candidates remained all the time busy in making the PM rallies a success, they hardly got time to establish contacts with the general voters who eventually drifted towards the rival alliance,” a BJP leader who spoke at the meet said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

He also blamed the party leadership for engaging th outsiders in the state poll campaign while ignoring the local party workers who eventually “lost interest” in the poll campaign.

A large number of BJP workers from Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and other states took part in the Bihar poll campaign.

The leaders also said a “feel good” situation in the party also damaged the party’s prospects in the elections.

“The top leadership had virtually taken it for granted that they would win the polls even before the elections were over and were busy in talking only nonsense. At no point of time did they look serious,” sources, quoting the party leaders, said.

They also blamed ticket distribution behind the disastrous performance of the party, saying outsiders and party hoppers were given tickets at the cost of grassroots party workers.

They also expressed displeasure over the way the party leadership did not try to placate the leaders who were angry after being denied tickets.

The party leaders however expressed satisfaction over the way the NDA managed to poll around 13 million votes, thus losing the elections by a relatively small margin of just three million votes.

While the NDA polled 13 million votes, the Grand Alliance polled around 16 million votes out of total polled votes of 38 million.

As per the report, the BJP-led NDA got only 34.1 per cent votes against 41.9 per cent of votes polled by the Grand Secular Alliance comprising the Janata Dal United (JD-U), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress party.

Lalu Prasad’s RJD, with 18.4 per cent votes, bagged 80 seats to emerge as the single largest party while Kumar’s JD (U) garnered 16.8 per cent votes to notch 71 seats. They both contested 101 seats each. The Congress, the third partner in the Grand Secular Alliance, fared creditably winning 27 of the 41 seats it contested. It polled 6.7 per cent votes.

The BJP, which contested 157 seats, polled the highest number of votes (24.4) but could bag only 53 seats. BJP’s NDA allies — the Lok Jan Shakti Party (LJP) and the Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) — could manage only two seats and one seat respectively, polling 4.8 per cent votes and 2.3 per cent votes.

They contested 42 seats and 21 seats respectively. The Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP), another BJP ally, contested 23 seats but won only two with a 2.6 per cent vote share.

In the last 2010 assembly polls, the JD (U) with BJP as ally had won 115 out of the 141 seats it contested with a vote share of 38.77 per cent votes whereas the BJP had bagged 91 of the 102 seats and its vote share was the highest at 39.56 per cent.