New Delhi: Following a close defeat for the Mahagathbandhan in Bihar, Communist Party of India (CPI) general secretary D Raja on Thursday said the result for the grand alliance could have been better had the seat-sharing been done in a better manner.
In an exclusive interview with ETV Bharat, Raja asserted that the Left parties had done well in the Bihar election.
"Had the seat sharing adjustment been done in a better way, we could have had a different result. The margin with the NDA was very narrow," he said.
The left parties including CPI, CPI(M) and CPI-ML contested in 29 seats under the umbrella of the Mahagathbandhan, and bagged 16 seats. CPI-ML secured victories in 12 seats, while the CPI and CPI(M) won two each.
In fact, after the BJP (67.3 per cent), it was the CPI-ML which registered a good strike rate of 63.2 per cent by winning 12 seats out of the 19 it contested.
The Congress meanwhile, had a poor strike rate of 27.1 per cent. It could register victories in only 19 seats out of the 70 it contested, also losing eight seats from its previous tally.
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Pertinently, Bihar was not the only state where the Congress' returns were poor. In Gujarat, Congress got nothing out of the eight seats it contested. In Madhya Pradesh, it bagged nine seats out of 28, Karnataka 0, Uttar Pradesh 0, and even Manipur 0.
"The Congress party seriously needs an introspection over the result. Similarly, RJD and others too need introspection over the poll results," said Raja.
However, Raja said the people of Bihar voted for Left parties and Mahagatbandhan, and stressed that the difference between the winning NDA and Mahagathbandhan was merely 0.03 per cent.
"The NDA and BJP wanted to do polarisation and targetted a particular section of the society. NDA did not contest on any real issue... And the claim made by BJP that the party won due to Narendra Modi is totally wrong," Raja said.
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Raja added that it was the RJD which emerged as the single largest party, and not the ruling BJP or JD(U).
"Vote share of JD (U) has also gone down... So BJP can't claim it as a spectacular win," the CPI general secretary said.
Raja said that the Bihar election will have its impact and implications in coming elections too, and praised the performance of the Left parties.
"The vote share and seats both increased for the Left parties. Neither CPI nor CPI(M) had any representative in the last Assembly. This time we won two seats each," Raja said.
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