CHANDIGARH: With winning only 15 seats as against the 40 seats it won in the 2009 Assembly polls, the counting day turned literally a black Sunday for the Congress in Haryana, marking an end to its 10-year-old rule in the state. The party could not even manage to win the number to be the main Opposition in the House as it slipped to the third place.
The vote share of the party this time is a meagre 20.6 per cent. In the LS polls also the party had performed poor, winning just one seat.
Sources said the reasons for such a debacle, include corruption, mismanagement, in-fighting, biased development programmes and land scams. Perhaps for the first time, especially in Haryana, a member of the Gandhi family was in the eye of the storm during the campaigning. Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra was at the centre of the controversy regarding his land deals and the Congress Government had faced severe criticism from the Opposition for extending favours to him.
Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda conceding defeat, urged the BJP to continue the ‘good works’ done by his government.
“A new government is going to come. I hope they will keep the growth momentum of Haryana,” he said. Hooda said he accepts the people’s verdict. “It is a democracy. Last time, we had got the mandate. This time it is the BJP,” he said.
Playing down Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s contribution to the success of the BJP, he said: “Modi did campaigning for his party. That is usual.”