New Delhi: If one drives from Jammu and Kashmir to Tamil Nadu, one will not find a Congress MP in half-a-dozen of states. The party has scored a nil in 18 states and union territories in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The Congress losers include eight chief ministers and the party’s leader in the Lok Sabha.
Among the big states, there are zero Congress MPs in Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Odisha. The smaller states which will not send a single Congress MP are: Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi and Uttarakhand. Apart from these, the Congress has no presence in Andaman and Nicobar, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, Lakshadweep, Manipur, Mizoram, Sikkim and Tripura.
The Congress leader in the Lok Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, lost from Kalaburgi in Karnataka. The party had fielded several former CMs in Lok Sabha battle and all of them lost. The list includes former Delhi CM Shiela Dikshit from North East Delhi, former Madhya Pradesh CM Digvijay Singh from Bhopal, former Maharashtra chief ministers Ashok Chavan from Nanded and Sushil Kumar Shinde from Solapur, former Uttarakhand chief minister Harish Rawat from Nainital, former Meghalaya CM Mukul Sangma from Tura, former Haryana CM Bhupinder Hooda from Sonepat and Verrappa Moily from Chikkballur in Karnataka.
Barring Kerala where Congress won 15 seats, the party has not reached double figures, the closes being eight each in Punjab and Tamil Nadu.
The party’s tally could not reach or surpass 2 in Bihar, Jharkhand, Telangana, MP, Maharashtra and Karnataka among big states. Its all-India tally is likely to remain below 50 at 49. This is the second successive Lok Sabha polls when the party got less than 50. In 2014, the Congress had won 44 seats.
