 "Cong forced to look for existence after BJP's record win in Guj: Scindia")
The Congress has been "forced" to look for its existence after the record victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the just concluded Gujarat Assembly polls, Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said on Friday.
The BJP has won 156 seats in the 182-member Assembly in the western state, the highest tally garnered by any party in Gujarat's 62-year-old history.
The Opposition Congress managed to emerge victorious on just 17 seats, down from 77 it had won in 2017.
"Today, the condition of Congress is such that it is forced to look for its existence," Scindia, who arrived here to take part in various programmes, told reporters.
Speaking about Assembly poll result in Himachal Pradesh, another state where elections were held recently, he said though the Congress has got a majority in the 68-member House and unseated the BJP, the difference in vote share between the two parties was miniscule.
"Earlier, whenever governments changed in Himachal Pradesh, the difference in vote share would be 6 per cent to 7 per cent. But this time it was less than 1 per cent," said the Union minister, who joined the BJP in March 2020.
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In the hill state, the Congress won 40 seats with a vote percentage of 43.9, while the BJP emerged victorious on 25 Assembly segments and got 43 per cent of the votes polled.
Asked about Madhya Pradesh Congress president Kamal Nath's claim that his party would win the 2023 Assembly polls in the central state, Scindia said some people "have a habit of dreaming".
"They keep dreaming. But in Madhya Pradesh, a double-engine government is working," said the Union minister.
BJP leaders often use the term "double engine government" to highlight benefits of having the same party in power at the Centre and in the state.
Incidentally, a rebellion by MLAs close to Scindia, who was in the Congress at the time, brought down the Kamal Nath government in Madhya Pradesh in March 2020. Later, a BJP government under the leadership of Shivraj Singh Chouhan took office.
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