Rajya Sabha MP Digvijaya Singh said on Wednesday that the Congress winning seven of the 16 seats in the Gwalior-Chambal region showed the rise of a “new Congress.”
“People thought the Congress would end after the departure of Scindia ji. But a new Congress has stood up,” Mr. Singh wrote in Hindi on Twitter. The region is the stronghold of BJP MP Jyotiraditya Scindia, whose supporters won all the region’s seats as Congress candidates in the 2018 Assembly election.
In the Malwa, Nimar and Bundelkhand regions, the results were not in the favour of the Congress, admitted Mr. Singh. “The Congress fought as a unit; there were no complaints of factionalism anywhere,” he said. After the fall of the Congress government in March, the BJP claimed it was the result of an internal conflict. “The Congress will have to be given a new form,” he said.
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While reposing faith in the leadership of the “Nehru-Gandhi” family, he hoped the party would win the trust of the public again. “The BJP will make full use of ‘money power’ to suppress ‘people’s power’. But we must stand with the poor, workers, farmers and marginalised sections against the falling economy and increasing unemployment under the BJP in the country. And we will succeed.”
On Tuesday, the BJP was declared winner in 19 seats, which has taken its tally in the 230-member Assembly to 126. The Congress bagged nine and was only partly able to recover its numbers to reach 96. The by-election was precipitated by the resignation of 25 Congress MLAs since March and the deaths of three sitting legislators.