2023: Congress loses momentum after victories in Karnataka, Himachal
Himachal Pradesh helped give much-needed confidence to take on the Bhartiya Janata Party. In the second month of this year, the Congress lost three north-eastern states- Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland.
The grand old party, however, regained turf with its phenomenal win in Karnataka in May this year by toppling the BJP government from its only bastion in South India.
The party, which saw a major internal tussle over leadership in Rajasthan, came tumbling down as it lost the three crucial Hindi heartland states--Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan--to its prime contender, the BJP.
With the Lok Sabha polls barely a few months from now, the Congress needs to count its pieces, identify and fix what went wrong, and take on the Modi juggernaut with new-found energy.
Congress' defeat in the three north-eastern states came into the limelight with its historic win in Karnataka in May after the party bagged 135 out of 224 seats in the state legislative assembly with a 43.2 per cent vote share as compared to 80 seats and 39 per cent vote share in 2018.
Such a landslide victory came to the party only after 1999, when the Congress won 132 seats under SM Krishna's leadership with a vote percentage of 40.84.
The Karnataka win gave new hopes to the opposition brigade, as the Congress was seen to be finally regaining its footprint after a series of electoral defeats in 2022, the only exception being Himachal Pradesh.
On July 18, 26 Opposition parties came together, with Congress forming the core, to form a new alliance to take on the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls. In the next few meetings that followed, they christened themselves INDIA, the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance.
After three meetings of the
