BHOPAL: Jolted by its third worst assembly poll performance in Madhya Pradesh over the last 20 years, the opposition Congress has called all its 230 candidates to Bhopal on Tuesday, to figure out reasons which led to the highly unexpected poll debacle.
The state party president and Congress’ chief ministerial face Kamal Nath has called all the 230 party candidates to the state party HQ in Bhopal on Tuesday, where Nath and other senior leaders of the party will discuss with the candidates issues and possible causes behind the dismal performance.
Importantly, though the party polled 40.40% vote (which was just 0.49% less than the 2018 polls vote share of 40.89%), it managed to win merely 66 seats, which was 48 seats less than the 114 seats won five years back. On the other hand, the ruling BJP which could win just 109 seats with 41.02% vote in 2018 polls, was a massive winner this time with 48.55% votes (which meant a massive 7.53% positive swing) to win 163 seats that was 54 more than the last polls.
The statistics of the recent polls suggest that the BJP largely cornered the previous polls’ votes of smaller parties, like the GGP, BSP and SP this time, to be a clear and massive winner, just a few months before the national elections. Importantly, while 60 sitting Congress MLAs lost the polls this time, what hurt the party the most was the defeat of its 19 senior leaders, including ex-ministers and multiple time MLAs.