Lucknow, May 14 (IANS) The Congress in Uttar Pradesh has lived up to its reputation of being a non-performer in the state politics.
The party has failed to make a mark in the municipal polls and what makes it worse is that the party leaders are revelling in Karnataka victory rather than worrying about its dismal performance in UP.
In the mayoral polls, the Congress was in contest in only three seats — Shahjahanpur, Jhansi and Moradabad.
In Shahjahanpur, Nikhat Iqbal bagged over 50,000 votes (15.42 per cent) of the total votes polled while in Jhansi, the Congress candidate, Arvind Kumar, bagged over 39,000 votes (8.71 per cent of the total votes polled).
In Moradabad, Congress candidate Mohd Rizwan got 1.17 lakh votes (40 per cent of the total votes polled on the seat).
The party’s candidate, Shyam Sunder Upadhyay ‘Bittu’, in Mathura finished third with a slim margin of just 19 votes. He got 35,173 votes while the candidate on the second slot got 35,191 votes. His vote share on the seat was 12.7 per cent.
In Lucknow, Congress mayoral candidate Sangita Jaiswal finished third. She secured nearly 1.02 lakh votes which was 7,000 less than what her predecessor Prema Awasthi garnered in the 2017 elections. Her vote share on the seat was 9.9 per cent.
The party’s presence among corporators has also declined.
While in 2017, the Congress had eight corporators in Lucknow, only three could retain their seats this time.
In Kanpur, Congress candidate Aashini Vikas Awasthi finished third with 90,480 votes — a massive decline in the party’s performance when compared to its situation in 2017.
The then candidate Vandana Mishra was able to secure 2.91 lakh votes which meant a hefty vote share of nearly 31 per cent.
The only saving grace for the party was its victory in the post of Rae Bareli’s nagar palika parishad chairman where Shatrughan Sonkar of Congress defeated BJP’s Shalini Kannaujia. However, out of nine nagar panchayat chairperson seats in the district, five went to the BJP and only one to Congress. The remaining three were clinched by the independents.
In Amethi, one of the nagar palika parishad chairperson seats went to the Congress and the other to the BJP. Congress’ won the Jais seat while BJP secured the Gauriganj seat.
Expectedly, the UPCC president Brij Lal Khabri, late on Saturday, issued a press note congratulating the party leadership for the Karnataka win.
Khabri claimed that the win would fill party cadres with new energy and lead to Congress victory in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
He did not mention a single word about the Congress performance in Uttar Pradesh under his leadership.
–IANS
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