It’s a long tradition of the Congress Party not to learn from its mistakes and defeats and to invite a bigger defeat next time. After that, it was the practice of the Congress party to blame the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). Without taking lessons from its recent defeats in Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir, the Congress Party is repeating the same mistakes in Jharkhand.
The Congress Party kept the Aam Aadmi Party busy in Haryana for seat distribution and then insultingly refused the alliance. It will take a long time for the Aam Aadmi Party to recover from this behaviour of the Congress Party. Now, the AAP will face difficulty in forming an alliance with the Congress party in the forthcoming Delhi Assembly elections too.
In Jammu & Kashmir, the Congress Party broke its alliance with Mehbooba Mufti’s PDP during the Lok Sabha elections and formed an alliance only with the National Conference for the Assembly elections. The Congress Party secured almost double the seats allotted to it by the National Conference based on its political strength in the state and within the alliance. The Aam Aadmi Party had contested the Jammu and Kashmir elections on its own without the INDI alliance in Jammu and Kashmir and in Haryana too.
In addition to the number of seats, the Congress Party entered into a friendly contest with the National Conference on seven seats. The Congress could neither win any of the seats nor secure the second position. Of these seven seats, the National Conference won four, the Aam Aadmi Party won one, and the BJP won the remaining two. The Congress Party could not even become a part of the Cabinet in Jammu and Kashmir at present.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress Party had a lead in 16 assembly seats in Jammu and Kashmir, but in 2024, it managed to lead in only seven seats. Therefore, the Congress Party should have contested fewer seats due to its decreasing political strength, and its priority should have been to focus on stopping the BJP and NDA by giving more seats to its allies.
Therefore, it is clear from the examples of Jammu & Kashmir and Haryana that the Congress party pressurise its allies to allot seats much more than its strength in terms of seats. Besides, the treatment meted out to the AAP by the Congress party in Haryana is quite shocking.
In Jharkhand, the Congress party should have taken all its allies along, but the Congress party rejected RJD outrightly and negotiated about seat sharing only with JMM. Due to this, RJD is more shocked than angry, as happened with AAP in Haryana. The Congress party should play the role of the big brother and decide the seats by holding a joint meeting with all the allies. Now, the RJD is planning to contest elections on many seats on its own. The RJD has a strong support base in Jharkhand since the days of joint Bihar. The RJD won 7 and 5 seats in the 2005 and 2009 Assembly elections, respectively. Premchand Gupta of the RJD also became Rajya Sabha MP from Jharkhand. Therefore, the Congress Party’s ignoring RJD is pushing it on the path of Jammu & Kashmir and Haryana.
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