India is such a vibrant, pulsating and politically-aware democracy that no one leader or political party can ever hope for dominating the electoral landscape in all the 29 states and seven union territories simultaneously. Not even Bharatiya Janata Party’s current poster boy and Prime Minister Narendra Modi who swept Indian general elections with a record mandate just four months ago!

In fact, none would be realizing this hard fact better than Modi himself considering the stun grenade that results of by-elections in three Lok Sabha and 33 assembly seats in nine states dropped on Modi’s BJP on Tuesday. The BJP got a clear drubbing. It had held 26 of the 32 assembly seats in eight states the results of which were announced on Tuesday, but lost as many as 14 of these. The BJP got a shocker primarily in three states: Uttar Pradesh (where it won 71 out of 80 Lok Sabha seats on its own in general elections the results of which were announced on May 16), Gujarat and Rajasthan (where it made a clean sweep winning all 26 and 25 Lok Sabha seats respectively four months ago).

In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP managed to win only two of the 11 seats where bye-elections were held, the rest going to the Samajwadi Party (SP). All the 11 seats were held by the BJP and its allies. To rub salt to BJP’s wounds, the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat, vacated by SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav was comprehensively won by the SP, defeating the nearest BJP rival by more than 320,000 votes. In Rajasthan, the BJP could win only one of the four seats, ceding three seats to arch-rival Congress.

However, the worst humiliating defeat for the BJP was in Modi’s home state of Gujarat where the party managed to win only six of the nine seats, ceding three to the Congress. All nine seats were held by the BJP. Worse, the results came as Modi reached Gujarat for the first time since becoming PM to receive Chinese President Xi Jinping in Ahmedabad on his 64th birthday on Wednesday.

The bye-elections results need to be analyzed with respect to the following questions. My brief decoder follows after every question.

1. Is the Modi wave waning? Is it the beginning of the end of Modi, politically speaking, so early in the day? Perhaps not.

Decoder: Well, that’s not really so. One, Modi himself did not campaign in any of the constituencies where bye-elections were held. Therefore, concluding that the bye-elections results signify the waning of Modi wave would be erroneous as well as hasty. Apart from Modi, no BJP bigwig or union minister had campaigned for the BJP in these constituencies.

2. Do the results demonstrate that voters want a strong opposition? Perhaps, yes.

Decoder: Virtually in every state where bye-elections were held, this actually seems to be the trend. If the BJP was beaten by SP in UP and by Congress in Gujarat and Rajasthan, the BJP for the first time opened its account in the eastern state of West Bengal where chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress is firmly ensconced. In the northeastern state of Assam too, the BJP won a seat.

3. Do the results show that SP and Congress are on a resurgent mode? Well, not really.

Decoder: SP will be foolhardy to count its chickens before they hatch. The reason is that SP’s arch-rival and main political player in UP, Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) did not participate in the bye-elections. Mayawati’s argument for not taking part in the bye-elections was the exercise was inconsequential, which will neither have a bearing on the state nor on the national politics. Her argument is not without merit. Congress too cannot justifiably thump its chest by getting a few crumbs in BJP-ruled states of Gujarat and Rajasthan, particularly when Modi and the entire BJP top brass stayed away from campaigning.

4. Will the bye-elections results cast a shadow on the BJP’s prospects in the forthcoming assembly polls in Maharashtra and Haryana, scheduled for Oct. 15? Perhaps yes, perhaps no; but the BJP definitely cannot ignore the voters’ verdict in the just-concluded bye-elections.

Decoder: Maharashtra and Haryana assembly polls will be the first test by fire for Modi and the BJP. Modi himself will be leading the BJP’s charge in these two states in the Oct. 15 elections. Both the states are currently under the Congress rule. If the BJP fails in the upcoming assembly polls then only one can justifiably say that the Modi magic is waning. Before that, saying such a thing will be premature.

Now let’s come to the main possible reason why the BJP performed so miserably in the bye-elections. It is because the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the BJP’s ideologue with a well-oiled nationwide mass base, stayed away from these elections. This is reflected from the poor voters’ turnout in the bye-elections, which averaged just 43 percent as against the 63 percent average in the recent Lok Sabha polls.

The going will be extremely tough for the BJP if the RSS stays away from campaigning in next month’s assembly polls too — a likely scenario. But that is a different story.

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The writer is a New Delhi-based independent journalist and a political commentator who tweets @Kishkindha