‘The Congress thinks that since all the Opposition parties are together, there will be an automatic vote transfer’.
In a recent Congress Working Committee meeting, the party president Mallikarjun Kharge talked about at least 260 Lok Sabha seats which the Congress party would contest in the upcoming general elections. The Lower House of Parliament has a total of 543 seats.
A CWC member stated, “Mr Kharge said that there are 260 seats which we will contest directly against the BJP and we don’t need any alliance on such seats. However, since we are already in an alliance, this means that these are the minimum number of seats the Congress party would contest in the upcoming LS elections. It looks like most of these seats will be against the BJP.”
Furthermore, considering the states with a head-to-head contest between Congress and BJP, there are nine states hosting a bipolar contest: Himachal Pradesh (4), Uttarakhand (5), Haryana (10), Rajasthan (25), Madhya Pradesh (29), Chhattisgarh (11), Gujarat (26), Karnataka (28), and Assam (14). These states collectively sum up to152 Lok Sabha seats.
A political surveyor tracking national politics said, “I don’t know if there are 260 seats which have a direct contest between Congress and BJP, but there are definitely around 200 seats that would be contested between the two.”
Another analyst remarked, “Regardless of the number of seats the Congress party will contest on, its major opposition is going to be the BJP. Because almost all the other major parties have come together with the grand old party under the umbrella of I.N.D.I.A bloc. Therefore, if they (Congress) win more than 100 seats, it will be at the cost of the BJP.
And if they are able to retain their last tally of around 50 seats, it will directly benefit the BJP as most of the remaining seats will be pocketed by BJP just like the last time.”
He added, “The only plus point for the Congress this time is that all the opposition parties have come together with the grand old party and there are no major parties standing against it apart from BJP. But it is difficult to assume that votes will not be divided. Politics is less about mathematics and more about chemistry. Moreover, current calculations suggest that BJP will easily secure around a hundred seats from Uttar Pradesh (which has 80 seats), Maharashtra (48), and Bihar (40), in addition to the seats it would win directly against Congress.”
Another leader privy to developments, however, remarked, “The Congress party seems to be taking this election mathematically, thinking that since all the Opposition parties have come together, there will be a vote transfer, and the grand old party will have the edge to win the seats. However, that approach is misplaced.”