Wednesday, 06 December 2023 | PNS | Dehradun
The dismal performance of the Congress party in the recently concluded assembly elections in the five states has disheartened the party cadre in Uttarakhand. The Congress leaders were hoping that the party would be able to form governments in at least three states. Based on ground reports and different surveys, the Congress was hoping to retain power in Chhattisgarh and wrest Madhya Pradesh and Telangana from BJP and BRS respectively. However the election results shocked the party as it was able to form government in only the southern state of Telangana and lost in three states of Hindi heartland.
The morale of the party workers in Uttarakhand had risen after the success of Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra and electoral successes in neighbouring Himachal Pradesh and southern State of Karnataka.
It is pertinent to mention here that Congress has faced a string of electoral defeats in Uttarakhand. The BJP is on a winning streak in the State ever since it bagged all the five parliamentary seats in 2014. It then came to power in the State in the assembly elections of 2017 and its candidates again secured landslide victories in all the parliamentary elections of 2019. Negating the anti incumbency and the trend the BJP retained its power in the State in the assembly elections of 2022.
The Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president Karan Mahara accepted the results of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh were not as per the expectation of the party. He however added that the party workers should not get demoralised since there is not much difference in the vote share of BJP and Congress. Mahara said that in fact Congress candidates got more votes than BJP candidates in the just concluded assembly elections.
