Bhubaneswar, Nov 12 (IANS): Rattled by BJD's clean sweep in the Odisha bypolls, the BJP and Congress on Wednesday said that they would discuss what went wrong and how to win back the confidence of the people.

The leaders of both the parties said that they will try to strengthen their parties at the grassroots level in order to win the confidence of the people.

"We will certainly revisit our strategy to strengthen the organisation of the party in the coming days," said state BJP president Samir Mohanty.

He, however, said the by-elections have given a clear indication that there will be a direct fight between the BJD and the BJP in the future.

"The results have given a clear indication that in future there will be a direct fight between the BJD and the BJP as the Congress has lost its political relevance in the state," said Mohanty.

The ruling BJD candidates emerged victorious in the bypolls to Tirtol and Balasore Assembly constituencies.

While BJD retained the Tirtol seat, and also succeeded in snatching the Balasore seat from the BJP even though it had fielded Manas Kumar Dutta, the son of late BJP MLA Madan Mohan Dutta, whose death necessitated the by-election in the Balasore constituency.

Dutta failed to corner the sympathy votes as Swarup Kumar Das won the seat by a margin of 13,351 votes.

The ruling party had nominated Bijaya Shankar Das, son of former BJD MLA late Bishnu Charan Das, who successfully garnered the sympathy of people and defeated BJP candidate Rajkishore Behera by a huge margin of 41,703 votes in the Tirtol Assembly seat.

The Congress, which performed miserably in both the seats, maintained that it would introspect to find the cause of the debacle.

"We will sit and introspect to find the reasons behind the defeat. There are several reasons behind the poor performance. We will discuss them in the coming days," said senior Congress leader Taraprasad Bahinipati.

Senior BJD leader and Panchayati Raj Minister Pratap Jena said that the elections were challenging for the party.

"Naveen Patnaik's mantra of good governance and development worked for the party. The BJP rode on a sympathy wave and even Union ministers campaigned for its candidate in Balasore. However, the BJD managed to win the seat in the end," said Jena.