It is rumoured that Congress will vie for only 255 of the total Lok Sabha seats in the upcoming elections, the lowest number of seats congress compete for in a general election since Independence in 1947, as per media reports .
The remaining 288 will be fight by the 27 parties of the opposition INDIA bloc.
With Congress’ depleting popularity in electoral politics, and view a alliance with opposition INDIA bloc as an lifeline for survival and a bid to defeat the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, the grand old party appears to have made much of a compromise.
Often criticized for high-handedness, and lack of space for other parties, Congress has decided to fight a slightly less than half the total Lok Sabha seats is evidently a step towards change.
Since India got free in 1947, the Indian National Congress has contested 17 Lok Sabha Elections between 1951 and 2019.
According to the available date, it has been observed that,on average,Congress has contested in over 450 seats of the total 545 seats in the Lok Sabha. The fewest seats Congress contested for was in the year 2004, when the the party fought in only 417 seats.
Interestingly, the highest was in 1996, when Congress fought in over 529 seats. This election occurred after a five year governance of PV Narasimha Rao in India.
The absolute popularity of Congress within the Indian vote bank saw a downward trend from the 2014 Lok Sabha Polls, just after Narendra Modi headed National Democratic Alliance (NDA) came into power, de-seating the UPA.
Notably, between the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha Polls, Congress had contested in 464 and 421 seats each.
Whereas, the BJP which won just two seats in the debut year 1984 despite fighting in over 229, now has over 290 MPs in the Indian Parliament. The saffron party has never fought , fewer than 300 seats since 1991.
INDIA bloc performance card of 2019
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s rumoured plan to contest 255 seats in the upcoming Lok Sabha Polls, would mean the rest of the seats (288) would be fought by the 27 parties in the opposition INDIA bloc.
Of them, in 2019, an undivided Shiv Sena had contested the most number of seats, followed by CPI(M), and Trinamool Congress.
However, the party that won the most number of seats they contested was MK Stalin’s DMK from Tamil Nadu, followed by Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) in Bihar.
