Congress reviews scorecard, future of INDIA after Lok Sabha polls | Lok Sabha Elections News

Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge with party leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi at CWC meeting in New Delhi on June 8.

Buoyed by its “good performance” in the Lok Sabha polls, a confident Congress on Saturday asserted that it was set to take on the challenge of defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) “at any cost” in the upcoming Assembly elections.

The party’s top decision-making body – the Congress Working Committee (CWC) – began its key meeting in New Delhi on Saturday. The members assembled at the Hotel Ashok in the national capital to hold crucial deliberations on the Lok Sabha election results and chalk out the party’s future strategy. Veteran Congress leader Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul also attended the meeting.

“People want change, we have to become their strength,” Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge posted on X.

Future focus areas of Congress after Lok Sabha election:

1) Kharge said the party was happy with its “good performance” in the Lok Sabha polls, in which it saw a marginal improvement in vote share and its total seats jumped to 99 from 52 in the 2019 election.

2) “The number of seats of the Congress party increased in Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribes, backward class, minority and rural areas. We have to make further efforts to make our influence among the urban voters and strengthen the party in these areas as well,” he said.

Congress on INDIA bloc

3) On the Opposition’s INDIA bloc, Kharge said the party would continue to work with its alliance partners “in and outside Parliament”. The alliance, comprising major Opposition parties including Samajwadi Party, DMK, Trinamool Congress, among others, fought the election together in a bid to oust the BJP government led by Narendra Modi.

While they fell short of their goal, the alliance dealt a significant blow to the BJP by collectively securing 243 seats out of 543, preventing the ruling party from achieving a majority (272) on its own. The new Narendra Modi government will now operate in coalition with the Janata Dal (United) and the Telugu Desam Party, among others.

Impact of Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra series

4) Besides Sonia and Priyanka Vadra, Kharge credited Rahul for leading the Bharat Jodo Yatra series, which, he said, boosted the party’s vote share in the regions where he led the yatra. “I would like to specifically mention that wherever Bharat Jodo Yatra and Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra passed, there was an increase in the vote percentage and seats of the Congress Party,” he said.

“In Manipur, from where Nyay Yatra started, we won both the seats. We got seats in many states of the North-East like Nagaland, Assam, Meghalaya. We emerged as the largest party in Maharashtra.”

Lok Sabha misses in key states

5) Kharge said the party would also review its performance in the states where the results were contrary to its expectations. The Congress did not win any seats in Delhi and Madhya Pradesh, and failed to improve its performance in West Bengal where it won just one seat, a seat down from the last time.

 

The party would review where it performed well in the Vidhan Sabha elections and formed the government, but could not repeat that performance in the Lok Sabha, he said.

First Published: Jun 08 2024 | 3:05 PM IST