Brought to its knees by the voter in successive elections last year, the Congress now finds solace in local body elections which have been bringing some good tidings for the party this year.
After Chhattisgarh local body elections saw the Congress put up a good show last week, the Cantonment Board polls results brought cheer to the grand old party on Monday.
For one, the Delhi results saw the Congress increase its vote share, and the Bharatiya Janata Party was wiped out in Varanasi and Lucknow, which fall within the Lok Sabha constituencies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh respectively.
By way of seats, the Congress picked up only two in the Delhi Cantonment Board where the Bharatiya Janata Party got five and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) one. But, according to Congress spokesman Randeep Surjewala, the party had polled the maximum number of votes.
According to Yashwant Deshmukh of the Centre for Voting Opinion & Trends in Election Research (CVoter), the BJP led the pack with 36 per cent votes polled in the Delhi Cantonment Board but there was a three per cent drop. The Congress got 29 per cent of the votes; registering an increase of 11 per cent. And, AAP with 25 per cent of the votes saw a drop of 15 per cent.
Insisting — to the amusement of the media — that the Congress would form the government in Delhi, Mr. Surjewala said: “The Congress, which the people call the underdog, will emerge as winner on the back of the stellar performance of our government for 15 years.” Asked about the Prime Minister turning the Delhi election into a bi-polar contest between the Congress and AAP, he said the results will show that the Congress is the only relevant party in the Capital.
