PUDUCHERRY: A day after the electoral drubbing, former Chief Minister V Narayanasamy under whom the Congress fought and lost the election, accepted responsibility for the defeat of his party.
“As the former Chief Minister, I accept full responsibility for the defeat of the Congress Party in the Assembly elections held in the UT of Puducherry on April 6, 2021. I bow my head to the verdict given by the people of Pondicherry state,” he said in a statement on Monday.
The Congress suffered its worst defeat in the history of elections here, winning just two seats. In one of the two seats, the party candidate Ramesh Parambath has won narrowly scraping through by a margin of just 300 votes in Mahe. The impact of Kerala was felt in Mahe, an enclave of Puducherry in Kerala, which resulted in a big mandate for the CPM backed Independent candidate Haridass who gave a scare to the Congress candidate.
In fact, none of the ministers in the Narayanasamy government, as well as its MLAs, could secure a win. The other Congress winner is AINRC turncoat M Vaidyanathan who joined the party just on the eve of filing nominations. Since he did not get a AINRC ticket to contest Lawspet, after the seat was allotted to the BJP in the AINRC-BJP-AIADMK alliance, he made a shift to join the Congress.
The anti-incumbency factor against the Narayanasamy government weighed heavily to impact the verdict. Moreover, several Congress leaders quitting the party and joining the BJP and AINRC also played its part in the disastrous performance by the Congress. Two Congress turncoats in the AINRC AKDV Aroumougham from Indira Nagar and KSP Ramesh from Kadirgamam won by the largest margins. After they quit, the Congress fielded greenhorns who hardly had any rapport with the people of their respective constituencies.
Another factor which played against the Congress has been the unpopularity of Narayanasamy who failed to focus on governance. People within and outside the party cited the instance of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal who managed to implement populist schemes despite the problems he faced from the Lt. Governor and the central government. Similar steps should have been taken by Narayanasamy, dropping the confrontation and looking at ways and means to implement schemes, they added.