Weighed down by anti-incumbency, the BJP heavily banked on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's personal appeal to enable it to sail through in the Assembly elections but it was not to be.
Asked whether the Modi and Shah factor did not work in this election, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said there are various factors for this outcome and one can speak about it after a thorough analysis.
Bommai said the Congress' "much organised" election strategy might have been one of the major reasons for its win.
The BJP failed to counter the Congress allegations on corruption effectively, another BJP leader said.
Another BJP leader said the party could have handled the ticket distribution strategy better. The party denied tickets to former chief minister Jagadish Shettar and former deputy chief minister Laxman Savadi, both of whom then left the party and joined the Congress.
The pre-poll 'guarantees' announced by the Congress promising free power, rice and unemployment doles also tilted a significant section of the voters towards the Congress, BJP sources said.
Another BJP leader said the party gave tickets to 75 new faces to combat anti-incumbency but some of them were tainted and did not have a clean image.