The Bharatiya Janata Party’s alliance partner the Shiv Sena on Tuesday called the Gujarat election results a “warning bell”. “The Gujarat model is doddering and we pray that it does not collapse in 2019,” an editorial in the Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamana said, The Indian Express reported.

In Gujarat and Himachal, the BJP has won but the Congress has not been defeated. The dream of a Congress-free India remains unfulfilled. The monkey has slapped the lion in its face and has rung a warning bell. These are warning signs for those who live in the belief that whatever they do is right.

— The Shiv Sena

“Those who indulged in this ridicule now have to pretend that they have passed with distinction, despite barely managing to pass,” it said, referring to those who had criticised the Congress and Patidar leader Hardik Patel in Gujarat. The edit said that though the BJP had won the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh polls, its winning wave had slowed down and lost intensity. It also asked whether the party’s victory was worthy of being celebrated in such a fashion.

Congress President Rahul Gandhi had called the results a “massive jolt” to the BJP and said that the saffron party could not best his campaign.

Shiv Sena candidates lose deposit in elections

The Shiv Sena, however, lost its deposit in all 42 seats it had contested from in Gujarat, NDTV reported. A candidate who does not get more than one-sixth the total number of valid votes polled by all the candidates of a seat does not get back the money deposited while filing a nomination.

“Of these 42, eleven candidates got more than 1,000 votes,” a party leader told NDTV. “We barely got 15 days for campaign. This period was too short. Our performance could have been better had we got three to four months to do the groundwork in Gujarat.”