Bhubaneswar: Stung by its crushing defeat in the Bijepur Assembly bypoll, the BJP is likely to change its strategy in the state. Hints in this regard were dropped recently by senior party leader and Union minister Jual Oram.

The minister, who had campaigned for the party extensively in Bijepur, told a local news channel recently that his party had made the mistake of revealing its bypoll strategy to the media and the ruling BJD took advantage of this.

Oram, who had slammed political pundits for writing off the BJP in the wake of the Bijepur debacle, indicated that the party would be more careful in future and keep its election strategy secret. BJP sources here said that the party henceforth would concentrate more on constituency level work than media publicity as this strategy had paid the BJP rich dividends in Tripura where it has stormed to power bringing 25-year-long Left rule to an end.

The defeat in Bijepur was a "big shock" for the party which is yet to come to terms with the huge margin by which it lost to the BJD. "Given our high-voltage star-studded campaign, we should not have lost by such a big margin. This calls for introspection," said a senior BJP leader adding that it was time the party re-worked its strategy in the state.