New Delhi:
Badly bruised by its humiliating defeat in the state elections, the ruling Congress believes that voters have punished it for stubborn inflation, and some of its senior leaders are demanding the urgent reversal of crucial economic reforms which have affected the price of cooking gas and fuel.
On Sunday, party president Sonia Gandhi said that the Congress would "introspect seriously" following its defeats. Her son, Rahul, who was the party's star campaigner, promised a transformation of the party to reverse its fortunes before the national election, due by May.
At a meeting called by Mrs Gandhi on Monday to post-mortem the elections, several leaders said that reducing the government subsidies on fuel and introducing a cap on cheaper cooking gas cylinders per household has demolished the Congress's support base among the poor.
Sources said many leaders criticized Finance Minister P Chidambaram's policies.
In polls held five months before India votes for a new government, the BJP booted out the Congress in Rajasthan, retained power in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh and became the largest party in Delhi, though it does not have a majority in the capital.
Worryingly for the Congress, the state elections showed that its welfare programmes, including a Rs 1.3 lakh crore food security plan for the poor and a jobs guarantee programme, were not enough to retain even its core supporters.
In Delhi, voters rewarded the new Aam Aadmi Party, which has promised clean governance, with 40% of the seats, proving that public frustration with corruption and inflation will bite the Congress .
Analysts have described the state results as a vote of no-confidence in the Congress as much as a vote of confidence for the BJP and its prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi.
It's unclear how far Mr Modi's campaigning at more than a hundred energetic rallies in recent months had contributed to the BJP's strong showing, an important factor in whether the results can be replicated nationally.