New Delhi: In a severe jolt to the BJP in the Hindi heartland in the “semi finals” ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress on Tuesday knocked the saffron party out of power in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan and by late in the evening wrote to Madhya Pradesh Governor Anandiben Patel, asking for a meeting to seek her permission to form the government in the state as the single-largest party with majority support.
However, in Telangana, the ruling Telangana Rashtriya Samithi (TRS) scored a landslide 4/5th win getting 87 seats out of 119 at stake, thrashing the Congress-led People’s Front.
Suffering his worst defeat since coming to power in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted late in the night that he accepted the verdict with humility and would work with greater vigour for the people.
The highlight of the day was the ding-dong battle between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress in Madhya Pradesh where leads alternated between the two sides with Congress getting a slight edge by winning 63 seats and leading in 51 in the 230-member House. On its own, the Congress is ahead in 114 seats, including those won.
The Congress had won 58 seats in the last election. A nearly 3 per cent swing in votes against BJP hit the party hard in the elections where agrarian unrest, unemployment and the ill effects of demonetisation dominated the campaign.
The Congress, which may be falling short of the magic figure of 116, could look to get backing from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which is leading in 2 seats, and the Samajwadi Party (SP), which is ahead in one, besides Independents, most of whom are Congress rebels and leading in four seats. The SP said it will back the Congress.
Facing a stiff anti-incumbency, the BJP under Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, which had won 165 seats in 2013, was pushed down to 109 seats with 60 wins and leading in 49 seats. The party has been in power for the last 15 years in the state.
The Congress took a sweet revenge against the BJP halting its bid for a fourth consecutive term in the neighbouring Chhattisgarh by returning to power with a massive victory.
In the election for the 90-member Assembly, the Congress won 33 seats and was leading in 35, while the BJP won only 6 seats and was ahead in 10 others. The alliance of former Ajit Jogi-led Janta Congress Chhattisgarh and Mayawati-led BSP fared poorly leading in all in only six seats together.
Rajasthan proved true to the 20-year old tradition of voting out the ruling party. The battle was won by the Congress which bagged 99 seats, while the ruling BJP won 73 seats.
The Congress, which is just short of halfway mark of 101, saw its ally Rashtriya Lok Dal winning one seat. The BSP won six seats and the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) had won 2 seats. The two parties had fought against both the Congress and the BJP. Others won 18 seats.
The Congress, which had a disastrous performance in the 2014 Lok sabha elections and suffering successive defeats in various Assembly elections, smiled for the first time defeating the BJP in a direct contest in 3 crucial states in north India.
Party president Rahul Gandhi, who campaigned vigorously, said the Assembly election results were a referendum on Modi’s non-performance on issues of unemployment, agrarian distress, corruption and negating the ill effects of demonetisation.
Riding a pro-incumbency wave, the TRS headed by Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, scored a scintilating victory in Telangana making a mincemeat of the Congress-led “Praja Kutami” that included the TDP, CPI and the Telangana Jana Samithi. The inclusion of the TDP apparently backfired as the TRS made a bogey of the presence of “outsider” from Andhra Pradesh in Telangana politics.
In the 119-member Assembly, the TRS won 88 seats, while the Congress managed to win only 19 seats. (Agencies)
