INDIA allies didn’t help each other: Congress leader after Maharashtra poll loss

As a bitter blame game broke out within the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) after their rout in the Maharashtra Assembly elections, Karnataka Home Minister and one of the Congress’s election in-charges, G Parmeshwar, on Sunday attributed the embarrassing defeat to the lack of cooperation and coordinated effort among alliance partners.
Parmeshwar said that the Congress did not fully support Shiv Sena (UBT) in several constituencies, and the approach by Uddhav Thackeray’s party was also the same. A similar lack of collaboration was evident with the NCP (Sharad Pawar faction), he added.
“In many places, we didn’t work for them, and they didn’t work for us. When we are in an alliance, we need to support Shiv Sena candidates, and Shiv Sena must support our candidates. The same issue occurred with Sharad Pawar’s party as well,” the Congress leader said while addressing the media.

The Congress-NCP (SP)-Shiv Sena (UBT) alliance suffered a crushing defeat, securing only 49 seats after the votes were counted on Saturday. While Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena won 20 seats, the Congress managed to secure 16, and Sharad Pawar’s NCP bagged 10.
Parmeshwar remarked that the Congress party was expected to secure a greater number of seats.
“Congress was supposed to win more seats in Vidarbha. We expected to win more than 50 seats but managed only 8 there. Out of 105 seats, we anticipated winning 60-70 seats, but we didn’t achieve what we expected,” he said.
The Congress leader also blamed electronic voting machines, echoing the claims of other Mahayuti leaders.
“What we have discussed among our leaders is that, in our country, as long as we have EVMs, it will be very difficult for Congress or any other party to come to power. They (the BJP) are experts in hacking EVMs; they manipulate them wherever they want,” Parmeshwar said.
The Mahayuti alliance, consisting of the BJP, Shiv Sena, and NCP, achieved a landslide victory, securing 233 out of 288 seats.