New Delhi, May 26: The BJP believes the Karnataka victory is a “turning point” in the country’s politics but realities in the rest of the country indicate a tough battle ahead.

The party leadership is aware that neither breaking fresh ground in the south nor retaining its hold on the Hindi heartland will be easy.

Karnataka has proved a happy hunting ground with the party’s vote share rising steadily in both the Assembly and parliamentary elections. But other southern states haven’t been as receptive to the party.

The journey in Andhra Pradesh, where the BJP did make inroads in certain pockets, has been downhill in recent years; Kerala and Tamil Nadu have never fancied the lotus.

In Andhra, the party had contested 24 seats in the 1999 Assembly polls and won 12, with a vote-share of 3.67 per cent. But its fortunes slumped in the 2004 elections, when it won only two of the 27 contested. The vote percentage, too, declined to 2.63 per cent. In the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, the party contested eight seats and won seven, with a vote-share of 9.9 per cent, but failed to win any seat in 2004 despite getting 8.41 per cent votes.

Some leaders feel the alliance with an unreliable Telugu Desam stunted the BJP’s growth. Now the party is on its own but it has gained little despite the presence of a senior leader like M. Venkaiah Naidu from the state.

The BJP has never won any Assembly or Lok Sabha seat from Kerala, despite the large network of the RSS, and its vote percentage has hovered around 5 to 6 per cent. Its best performance so far has been to get 2.5 lakh votes for Thiruvananthapuram candidate . Rajagopal in 2004.

In Tamil Nadu, the BJP has opened its account in the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, but hasn’t created a lasting political space. In the 1999 Lok Sabha polls, it bagged four seats, with 7.14 per cent votes, but got none in 2004 despite polling 5.07 per cent.

The preference so far has been to ride on alliances with the DMK or the ADMK, but none of the former partners has agreed to tie up with the BJP for the next general election.

The way odds are stacked against the party means the BJP will struggle in the 101 Lok Sabha seats spread across the three southern states. What is more worrisome is that the party is facing anti-incumbency in the heartland states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, which go to polls later this year.