NEW DELHI: Even with Assembly polls in five states, the Congress is doubling its efforts to meet a target of winning 20-26 Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat in 2019 and fill the gaps that cost the party several crucial seats in the 2017 Assembly polls in the state.
“The focus now is on micromanagement, accommodating various leaders, feedback on selection of candidates and not repeating the mistakes of 2017,” a senior AICC functionary told this paper. In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress lost all the 26 seats in the state to the BJP. Both parties had fought tooth and nail for each seat during the 2017 Assembly polls.
The Congress won 79 of the 182 Assembly seats against the 99 of the BJP. Sources within the opposition party said they lost around 10 seats due to faulty ticket distribution and another 16 by a margin of less than 3,000 votes. “These could have been saved but last year we were under a lot of pressure,” said the functionary, who did not want to be named.