The Congress under the leadership of Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi held back discussions on seat-sharing with INDIA alliance partners for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The grand old party reportedly wanted to wait for the assembly results in five states - Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhatisgarh, Telangana, and Mizoram. The Congress, which had won three Hindi heartland states in 2018, was hoping to win big - this would have placed the grand old party in a better position during seat-sharing talks for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
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However, the shocking defeat in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh has upset Congress' arithmetic for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Ahead of the assembly polls, the Congress was confident of retaining Chhattisgarh and wresting Madhya Pradesh from the BJP. However, in both states, the grand old party has been hammered badly.
In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP is heading for a landslide victory with a lead on 160-plus of 230 seats and ahead on 53 of 90 seats in Chhattisgarh, way more than the required number to form the government in Bhopal and Raipur.
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The drubbing of Congress will embolden the INDIA alliance partners like AAP in Madhya Pradesh, Amit Jogi's Janta Congress Chhattisgarh in Chhattisgarh, and Samajwadi Party (SP) in Madhya Pradesh. While SP is a minor player in Madhya Pradesh, it may have dented Congress' chances in a few seats by cutting their votes.
Ahead of the polls, the rift between the Akhilesh Yadav-led party and Congress surfaced after the grand old party refused to give six seats to the SP. Akhilesh Yadav was furious at Congress for not ceding space for his party and said he would not have entered the alliance if he was told that the INDIA alliance was not applicable in the state.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, too, expressed disappointment at Congress' for delaying seat-sharing talks for the Parliamentary elections to be held early next year. Nitish Kumar said the Congress seemed to be more interested in the five assembly polls. "In the INDIA coalition, all of us agreed to assign Congress the leading role. But it appears they will respond and call the next meeting only after they are through with the ongoing elections," he had said.
The INDIA alliance, a group of 28 political parties, has been formed to stop the BJP's juggernaut in 2024. After formation, the alliance moved quickly and held three back-to-back meetings, first in Patna in June, second in Bengaluru in July, and third in Mumbai on August 30-September 1. However, the momentum fizzled out as Congress pressed the wait-and-watch button, hoping wins in three states may solidify its top place and secure the leadership role in the alliance.
Now that Congress has failed miserably in three of four key states, the national and regional parties may bargain hard with the Congress for more seats in the Lok Sabha elections. The assembly results have also weakened Congress as a party in the Hindi heartland, which will play a key role in determining who will prevail in 2024.
The Congress will now face the emboldened Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, the most crucial state with 80 Lok Sabha seats. Besides the BJP, Mayawati's BSP and Akhilesh Yadav's SP are two major regional parties in Uttar Pradesh. In 2019, the saffron party had won 67 of 80 seats while 10 went to BSP, 5 to SP, and one seat to Congress.
After Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra sends the highest number of MPs at 48. Now, Congress may also lose bargaining power in Maharashtra, where Sharad Pawar-led NCP and Shiv Sena might push for a higher number of seats. In West Bengal, which has 42 Parliamentary seats, Mamata Banerjee is likely to upset Congress' hopes. In the 2019 polls, the Trinamool Congress bagged 22 seats, 18 went to the BJP and just two to Congress.
In Bihar, Nitish may now be in the driving seat when it comes to seat-sharing with Tejaswi Yadav's RJD and Congress. In all, Congress will now have to swallow its pride and bargain hard to retain whatever is left with it before the mega clash in 2024. Congress has won big in Telangana, another southern state after Karnataka.
The grand old party may rely on Telangana in the Lok Sabha polls but Karnataka may vote differently, as has happened in the past where voters have thrown different results for assembly and general elections.