Defeat could not have come at a worse time. Of the two Assembly seats that the BJP lost to the Congress today, the Hauz Khas was one it won a few months ago. But Sushma Swaraj decided to relinquish it which lead to a by-election.

The other seat in Nangloi Jat saw the re-emergence of the veteran Delhi Congress power-broker Sajjan Kumar in the rural belt. The BJP's Jat leader Sahib Singh Verma who had become a force in the area today seems a spent force.

The results of by-elections is bitter for BJP for more reasons. The party is facing dual embarrassment -- over the Bihar issue and from its own ranks. Senior BJP leader and former Union Minister Madan Lal Khurana is all set to bare his heart on the BJP-RSS relationship on the floor of the Lok Sabha.

All good counsel have failed to deter the BJP leader from Delhi, whose sidelining during the last Assembly election is said to have contributed in alienating the Sikh-Punjabi voters and the BJP rout. But this was perhaps the first election in which the Khurana-factor was nowhere in play.

This by-election demolished two other Delhi leaders, Sushma Swaraj and Sahib Singh Verma. Swaraj, who has been nurturing the upmarket South Delhi constituency for some time, lost ground after she sacrificed the seat to retain her Lok Sabha seat.

In fact, the BJP Delhi chief, Mange Ram Garg, said as much: ``The re-elections results trend go against you. Sushmaji's resignation from the Hauz Khas seat may have adversely affected the party's fortune. In such situations the voters lose interest which resulted in a low turnout''. However Rajya Sabha chief-whip and Delhi BJP in-charge, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, acknowledged that the party has lost ground. ``The minority vote-bank, including the Sikhs, the scheduled castes and the JJ colony voters which constitute 40-50 per cent of the two constituencies have moved from us and gone entirely to the Congress,'' her said.

The BJP have always won in triangular contests. But in the absence of the third force, it was a straight BJP-Congress contest. And the party which rules the Centre did not stand a chance.