The BJP, which had hoped to build the Sabarimala temple issue in Kerala as Ayodhya 2.0 before the Lok Sabha elections, on Saturday night called off its relay hunger strike on January 20 as the protest was “not entirely successful”.

The capitulation on Sabarimala came the same day the Kerala government told the Supreme Court that 51 women younger than 50 years of age had entered the temple after the September 2018 judgment that had allowed women of menstruating age to enter the shrine.

In recent memory, the BJP has not been seen stepping back from any protest or movement that it had managed to tar with a Hindutva brush. On Sabarimala, party chief Amit Shah had made speeches to boost the protest by right-wing agitators who attacked women attempting to enter the shrine. In October, he said the Pinarayi Vijayan-led Left government’s implementation of the apex court order was an attack on “Hindu traditions”.

For more than a year, the BJP and the Left parties in Kerala have traded attacks, most violently in Kannur. In such a backdrop, when the party heard the first rumbles of protest against the Sabarimala apex court judgment, it sniffed political opportunity. But by going against the order that attempted to correct a longstanding gender disparity, the BJP found itself in a direct fight with Vjayan, who was determined to uphold the Supreme Court verdict.

At the venue of the Sabarimala protest on Saturday, Kerala BJP president P.S. Sreedharan Pillai said the party would end the indefinite fast the following day. 'There were notable achievements during certain phases of the agitation, but, our fight to protect the faith was not entirely successful,' he said.

The party had been protesting for nearly two months.

'Even though we were unable to achieve 100 per cent success, we were able to garner more public support due to the blessings of Lord Ayyappa,' Pillai said at the protest venue in front of the secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram.

The protest seemed to have lost steam and the BJP was unable to field known leaders to take part in the indefinite relay fast.

The BJP-led by National Democratic Alliance has met Kerala governor P. Sathasivam and submitted a memorandum seeking withdrawal of “fabricated” cases registered against “devotees”. 'Around 5,000 fabricated cases have been registered against the devotees who protested. Almost 1,000 activists are still in jail. They must be released,' Pillai said.