New Delhi : Upbeat over its performance in the national polls, the Congress has started planning to reap dividends in the Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand assembly elections scheduled to be held later this year.
While the grand old party plans to continue with the Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance in Maharashtra including Shiv Sena UBT and NCP-SP and its alliance with JMM and RJD in Jharkhand, the Congress may go solo in Haryana.
The reason party insiders said is that while the alliances in both Maharashtra and Jharkhand have been existing for the past several years, the Congress left only one Lok Sabha seat Kurukshetra for the AAP keeping in mind the national INDIA bloc.
The MVA was formed in Maharashtra in 2019 when undivided Sena dropped old ally BJP and joined hands with the Congress and undivided NCP but the alliance was ousted from power in 2022 when the BJP broke up Sena through unfair means and came to power via the rebel faction led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. The game was repeated in 2023 when the BJP broke up NCP through unfair means and inducted rebel Ajit Pawar as deputy chief minister in the Shinde government.
In the 2024 national polls, the Congress emerged as the single largest party winning 13 out of the 17 it contested in the total 48 seats and had the support of independent MP from Sangli Vishal Patil.
Accordingly, AICC in charge of Maharashtra Ramesh Chennithala has convened a meeting of the newly elected MPs on June 7 where he is expected to discuss the coming assembly poll plans with the parliamentarians.
“We are very happy over the Lok Sabha results and hope the party would be able to repeat the feat in the coming assembly polls. We will soon start assessing the ground level situation district wise with the local workers. We will take steps to strengthen the party across the state but we will go to the polls as part of the MVA,” AICC secretary in charge of Maharashtra Ashish Dua told ETV Bharat.
Party insiders said the 2024 Lok Sabha results are a big morale booster as the Congress could win only 1 seat in 2019. This time, the Congress won the Dhule seat after a gap of 20 years.
In Haryana the Congress which could not win a seat in 2019, won 5 out of 10 Lok Sabha seats this time. Rohtak MP Deepender Hooda said the party had registered a high vote share on around 46 of the 90 assembly seats in the state in the national polls and this will have a big impact on the coming state polls. Deepender Hooda who lost the polls in 2019, won from Rohtak with a heavy margin this time.
“We have been preparing ground for the past two years by mobilizing people against the BJP which has been defeated by the people,” said Hooda.
In Jharkhand, the JMM won 3 seats while the Congress 2 while the BJP lost five seats and retained 8 despite targeting the ruling alliance over alleged corruption. All the five seats lost by BJP are in the tribal areas and were the result of infighting. In 2019, the BJP had won 12 out of 14 Lok Sabha seats in the state. “Now the alliance hopes to strengthen itself ahead of the state polls and win the state,” Jharkhand Congress chief Rajesh Thakur told ETV Bharat.
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