Congress Graph Up After 2014 & 2019, Leading In 98 Seats, Doing Well In Hindi Belt Too

New Delhi: The Congress is leading in 99 Lok Sabha seats, more than double the seats it won in 2014 and a little less than the seats it won in 2019.

The party won only 44 seats in 2014 and 52 in the 2019 election.

The ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) surpassed the halfway mark of 272 early on Tuesday as counting began with postal ballots this morning.

Though far behind the BJP and NDA, the Congress graph looked upwards. At 14:24 pm, the Congress was ahead in 98 seats whereas the BJP was leading in 239 seats.

In Uttar Pradesh where the party had even lost the Amethi seat, the INDIA alliance of Samajwadi Party and Congress were seen leading in 44 out of 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh. In the 2014 and 2019 elections, BJP scored 71 and 62 seats.

In 2009 when Congress led the United Progressive Alliance, it won 206 seats. However, in 2014, Congress lost 162 seats, dropping by about 9.3 per cent of the vote share. The party then led by Rahul Gandhi faced the ‘Modi wave’ in Gujarat and Rajasthan in the west to Bihar and Jharkhand in the east, and down to Madhya Pradesh. NDA won 336 out of the 543 seats and the saffron party on its own won 282 seats.

The NDA won 73 seats in UP, 41 in Maharashtra, 31 in Bihar, 27 in Madhya Pradesh, 26 in Gujarat, 25 in Rajasthan, seven in Delhi, four in Himachal Pradesh, five in Uttarakhand, 12 in Jharkhand, 10 in Chhattisgarh, and seven in Haryana.

The Congress got just two seats in UP’s Amethi and Raebareli and six seats across the rest of the belt. Its UPA partners got another six.

In 2019, BJP formed the government winning 303 seats on its own and 353 with allies. It got 74 in UP, 39 in Bihar, 28 in Madhya Pradesh, 77 seats from Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi, winning nine from Chhattisgarh and 11 from Jharkhand.

Once again, Congress saw defeat in the Hindi belt and even Congress president Sonia Gandhi was shockingly defeated in UP’s Amethi. She lost to BJP’s Smriti Irani despite winning thrice from the constituency.

Congress’s defeat led to Sonia Gandhi’s resignation from the party president’s post. The trend seems close to reversing as Irani, who had defeated Gandhi in 2019, was trailing behind Congress’ Kishori Lal Sharma in Amethi at noon.