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Many political analysts and news agencies thought that in MP there would be a tough fight between Congress and BJP. There was an anti incumbency for BJP . Corruption, Unemployment would play an important role in this election. BJP would be in a difficult situation in the state election. Even former congress president Rahul Gandhi also claimed to win MP election in his Bharat jodo Yatra.
But despite all these facts what went wrong for congress.
There are various political analysts, journalists who presented their views on this topic, some have given the credit to Prime Minister Modi ,Amit Shah leadership skills , Others have given credit to Ladli Behna Yojana which consolidated the women votes to BJP due to which BJP won 163 seats in MP. Some believe that it was a SHIVRAJ SINGH magic that works in MP.
But there are some other reasons also which must be addressed for the defeat of congress.
1. Poor booth level management: congress is 135 years old political party which has ruled the state over more than 35 years after the state formed by Fazl Ali commission in 1957. Still there was a poor booth level management shown by the party. Many reports suggest that in many constituencies the party candidate were not able to find the booth agent in many booths of their constituency. Even though IYC started an initiatives ek booth 5 youth, the party doesn’t have skilled booth agent.
Many candidates have fixed their booth agent list just the night before polling. Most of the agents were unskilled and not aware of the norms. They lack training also some of them have left their booth during the polling time. Which surely gave the advantage to the war machine, highly skilled workers of BJP. Even on the polling days congress party war room team completely failed the areas which were the traditional bastion of congress in those areas voting percentage decreases due to violence for example Dimni in morena. Due to which people didn’t come out of home to vote.
2. Less importance given to social engineering : Congress and their leaders are very aggressive on caste census. But this strategy didn’t help them in MP, Congress promised the caste census and 27% reservation to O.B.C but despite all these facts congress couldn’t secure even 40% of OBC votes. And due to these manifesto promises it has lost the upper caste and SC votes too in the state. Because of this it has lost in 2 big regions of MP that is gwalior chambal and in vindhya region. Last time gwalior chambal region BJP was completely rooted out due the controversial statement made by Shivraj Singh “ koi mai ka lal Aarakshan khatam nahi kar sakta” due to which upper caste voted against BJP which helped the Congress. But this time upper caste was not happy with the Congress due to which it prominent upper caste leaders like Govind Singh ( leader of opposition) lost from laher (bhind) praveen pathak from gwalior, KP Singh from shivpuri even Digvijay singh son Jayvardhan manages to win with less than 5000 votes. On the other hand O.B.C didn’t choose congress as there was no big O.B.C leader in congress Arun Yadav was sidelined by the party so was Jitu Patwari. Even the tribal leader Kantilal Bhuriya who was made the chairman of campaign committee didn’t show much. He was only limited to his area ratlam-jhabua. Leaders like Umang Singhar, Bala Bachchan were completely out of pictures due to Which congress couldn’t consolidate its ST votes which constitute 21.1 % of the state population as per the 2011 census. There was no social engineering done by the party . Due to which it completely failed in state Election.
Taking a lesson from its defeat party has assigned new responsibilities of state by taking care of social engineering, Umang Singhar tribal leader is being made leader of opposition, Jitu Patwari obc leader as PCC chief And Hemant Katare brahmin leader of gwalior chambal region as deputy leader of opposition. Now let us see how this works in the upcoming lok sabha election as the state consist of 29 seats.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.