Even as the Congress has come under criticism from its allies, as well as party leaders, over its show in the Bihar assembly elections, senior leader P Chidambaram on Friday pointed at the performance of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Chidambaram said that despite its win in Bihar, the “decline” in its performance since last year’s Lok Sabha polls is “visible and significant.”
“Even after the Bihar Assembly elections, the decline in BJP’s performance after 2019 Lok Sabha elections is visible and significant. Of the 464 Assembly segments that the BJP contested both in 2019 and in subsequent Assembly polls and by polls, the BJP has won only 218 segments,” Chidambaram tweeted.
On the contrary, the BJP had won 392 segments in 2019, Chidambaram posted in a subsequent tweet. “As I have pointed out, the Mahagathbandhan lost to the NDA by a whisker of 0.03%,” he added. “The elections turned on 8 seats. If the MGB had won 8 more seats, the result would have been 118 to 117 (instead of 110 to 125). Significantly, the HAM and VIP won 8 seats!,” the former Union finance minister said.
Since its thumping victory in the Lok Sabha polls last year, in which it won a second consecutive time and with a bigger majority, the BJP has fared poorly in several assembly polls. While the BJP managed to retain Haryana after stitching an alliance with the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP), the party failed to form a government in Maharashtra after a fallout with the Shiv Sena. The BJP then lost its incumbent government in Jharkhand followed by a second successive poor show in Delhi, where it won just eight out of 70 seats.
Chidambaram’s Twitter thread comes as the Congress faces severe backlash from its Bihar ally, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). Of the total 110 seats that the RJD-led Mahagathbandhan or Grand Alliance won, the Congress managed only 19 out of 70 seats. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), meanwhile, managed to cross the majority mark, winning 125 seats in the 243-member assembly.