Congress party is on a roll

 

NEW DELHI: The Congress on Thursday was on a roll after it won 9 of the 11 assembly seats and one Lok Sabha seat on Thursday.

 

The icing on the cake was the victory in the Daryapur and Chimur assembly seats in Maharashtra and Chamundeshwari assembly seat in Karnatka, where Siddaramaiah staved off a determined bid by the state chief Minister Kumaraswamy and Deve Gowda to ensure his defeat.

 

The party had also something to cheer in the BJP-held states of Chattisgarh and Rajasthan. Former Chattisgarh Chief Minister Ajit Jogi’s wife Renu Jogi won the Kota seat defeating her BJP rival, while the Congress party also won the Dungarpur assembly seat in Rajasthan. The party also won 1 of the 2 Lok Sabha seats in AP where by-elections were held last week, taking its strength in the Lok Sabha to 148. 

 

TRS Chief Chandrashekhar Rao retained his Karimnagar Lok Sabha seat by a handsome margin of 1,99,0365 defeating his Congress rival Jeevan Reddy. The party added to its tally in the state by winning Bobbili with B Jhansi Rani defeating her TDP rival by a 157 votes.

 

A significant feature of the by-elections was the manner in which two of the recent entrants to the party Narayan Rane in Maharashtra and Siddaramaih demonstrated their clout.

 

Rane had quit the Shiv Sena and joined the Congress party in Maharashtra.

 

Several of his supporters amongst the MLAs also quit their seats to join him. In the recently held by-elections both his supporters won their seats. Prakash Bharasakalke and Vijay Wadwattiar won the Daryapur and Chimur seat respectively.

 

Siddaramaih, an OBC leader from Karnataka, recently quit the JD (S) to join the Congress and was involved in a battle for survival against the combined might of the state Chief Kumaraswamy and his father the former Prime Minister Deve Gowda.

 

Yet another feature of recent elections was the close margin of victory in several of the seats. Siddaramaih was involved in a dead heat with his JD (S) rival in Chamundeshwari and squeaked past his rival by a mere 257 votes, while the Congress candidate won the Bobbili Lok Sabha seat by a mere 157 votes.

 

Similarly the CPI (M) won the Thiruvambadi assembly seat by a slender margin of 246 votes. The CPM also won the Islampur assembly seat in West Bengal, while there was some consolation for the BJP as it managed to retain the Pandhana assembly seat in Madhya Pradesh.

 

 

 

 

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The six-month-old Left Democratic Front government in Kerala was spared a major embarrassment on Thursday, when it retained the Thiruvambadi assembly constituency by a slender margin of 246 votes. CPI (M)’s George M Thomas got 64112 votes, while Indian Union Muslim League’s Ummar got 63,866 votes. BJP, as usual, came a distant third.

 

After a two-hour thriller in which fortunes tilted in favour of both the ruling and the Opposition fronts, every political party claimed a victory of sorts for themselves.

 

While the LDF portrayed the victory as a political one for the government, the opposition tried to play down the result as a “technical win”. They alleged that the government was losing its mandate.

 

The result, however, will have a larger impact on the fate of the NCP, a Left ally in Kerala. The party, which has a considerable presence in Thiruvambadi, was on a safe wicket as long as the poll campaign was in progress. Now, the communist parties may have a rethinking on cohabiting with the party, which had merged with former Congress leader K Karunakaran’s pocket party last month.

 

The  CPI (M) state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan tried to put up a picture of unity by saying that Karunakaran’s presence might have helped the campaign, his bete noire and chief minister VS Achuthanandan struck a different note. “People may not be happy with the merger between Democratic Indira Congress (Karunakaran) and NCP,” he said.

 

 

 

 

HYDERABAD: Barely hours after the announcement of TRS chief K Chandraskhara Rao’s (KCR) return to the Lok Sabha from the Karimnagar seat with a thumping margin of nearly two lakh votes over his nearest rival, the biggest ever in the constituency, troubles besieged the Congress in Andhra Pradesh.

 

Taking moral responsibility for the party’s dismal performance in the by-election, sports minister M Satyanarayana Rao (MSR), tendered his resignation while a splinter Telangana group within the party increased pressure on the high command for immediate action on the separate state issue. KCR polled over 3.70 lakh votes defeating T Jeevan Reddy of the ruling Congress.

 

L Ramana of the Opposition Telugu Desam Party finished third, while former Union minister Ch Vidyasagar Rao of the BJP, finished a poor fourth.

 

The other by-election in the state in Bobbili in Vijayanagaram district the Congress candidate B Jhansi won by a wafer thin margin of 150 votes in the battle with the TDP candidate.

 

KCR accepted the vote was for Telangana and not necessarily for his leadership, but CM YSR Reddy maintained there would be no change in the government’s stance on the issue that was left to party chief Sonia Gandhi to thrash out a consensus.

 

“The Congress has never denied there was a Telangana sentiment which is basically due the decade long neglect of the region by the previous TDP regime,” he said.