Third consecutive defeat of the Congress party in Uttarakhand in the Lok Sabha elections of 2019 has left the once powerful party in shambles. The party which swept to power in the state after the assembly elections of 2012 with a vote share of 33.8 percent as compared with 33.1 percent vote share of BJP has progressively lost ground to the saffron party in Uttarakhand. In the parliamentary elections of 2014, Congress lost all the five seats it won in the elections of 2009 to the BJP in Uttarakhand. In this election the Congress got a vote share of 30 percent as compared to 56 percent vote share of BJP. The poor performance of the Congress party continued in Uttarakhand during the assembly polls of 2017 when it was able to get only 11 seats in 70 member strong state assembly. The vote share of Congress in this elections remained at 33.5 percent while BJP got 57 seats by cornering 46.5 percent of the popular vote. In the just concluded Lok Sabha elections, a saffron wave swept through the entire state with BJP winning all the five seats by securing a staggering 61 percent of the popular vote. The Congress candidates lagged far behind in all the five seats as they were able to secure only 31.40 percent of the votes.
The huge difference in the vote share of the two parties in Uttarakhand was reflected in the results as in three parliamentary constituencies of Nainital- Udham Singh Nagar, Garhwal and Tehri Garhwal, the victory margins of BJP candidates Ajay Bhat, Teerath Singh Rawat and Mala Rajya Laxmi Shah respectively was more than 3 Lakh. In the remaining two constituencies of Haridwar and Almora too, the BJP candidates trounced the Congress candidates by margin of 258729 and 232986 respectively.
Apart from losing ground steadily to the BJP, the Congress party has lost many of its top leaders like Satpal Maharaj ( 2014), former chief minister Vijay Bahuguna, Harak Singh Rawat and Suboadh Uniyal (2016) and powerful SC leader Yashpal Arya ( 2017) to BJP.
It is worth mentioning here that in the just concluded elections, the Congress party fielded senior leaders like former CM and member of Congress Working Committee ( CWC) Harish Rawat and Pradesh Congress Committee ( PCC) President Pritam Singh from Nainital- Udham Singh Nagar and Tehri respectively but they failed miserably. The attempt of the party to field Manish Khanduri, the son of Major General ( Retd) B C Khanduri from Garhwal in order to inflict a division in the BJP votes also backfired.
When contacted, the Vice President of the state unit of the Congress party, Surya Kant Dhasmana accepted that the results are very bad for the party and a deep introspection is needed on the results. He added that the party should focus on strengthening its organisation to combat BJP in the state.
