In an embarrassing moment for the Congress, its mouthpiece, National Herald conceded defeat in the upcoming Madhya Pradesh polls. It has reported that according to a survey by Spick Media, BJP will sail through if Congress and BSP were to participate separately in the elections. However, even if the BSP and the Congress would enter into an alliance, the BJP will be able to cross the majority mark. This seems to be an abject surrender on the part of the grand old party in face of unwavering support for the sitting chief minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
According to the National Herald report, if the BSP and the Congress participate separately in the elections, the BJP will secure a landmark victory and will win 147 out of the 230 seats in the assembly. However, if a BSP-Congress alliance came into picture, the BJP will secure 126 seats, 10 seats over and above the minority mark. It is absurd that National Herald still claimed that these trends would worry BJP president Amit Shah as there are effectively just four months remaining before the assembly elections, and talks are underway between the BSP and the Congress for an alliance in the state.
The Congress mouthpiece did not stop here and embarrassed the Rahul Gandhi-led party even further by stating that this sounds a warning for the Congress as popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains very high in Madhya Pradesh, as per other findings of the same survey. Whereas the Congress and especially the Gandhi sycophants within the Congress have always been in denial of the fact that prime minister Modi enjoys widespread popularity across the length and breadth of the country. Therefore, this must have left the Congress red faced.
National Herald further reported positive prospects for the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections as far as the state of Madhya Pradesh is concerned. According to the survey quoted by the report, in the worst case scenario for the BJP if the Congress were to enter in an alliance with the BSP, the BJP will manage to secure 16 seats out of 29 Lok Sabha seats in the state. On the other hand, if the BSP and the Congress were to contest separately, the BJP will sweep the state and secure 26 seats in the state. It also states that things will worsen for the Congress if the Lok Sabha and the assembly polls were held simultaneously and the Congress will have to work triply hard in order to win the state back from the BJP after a long period of 15 years.
The survey has also reached a number of other findings which are going to give the Congress leaders sleepless nights. According to it, a mammoth 70 per cent of the respondents feel that the Central Government led by the BJP has partly fulfilled the essential needs of the state. The respondents agree that economic condition of the nation has improved between 2014-18 (during the tenure of Modi government) and that schemes like demonetization and GST have been quite successful. It also states that prime minister Modi is the most popular leader among respondents in Madhya Pradesh and Rahul Gandhi is far behind in terms of popularity.
This story by National Herald is going to haunt the Congress especially because this time its mouthpiece itself is vividly describing the party’s waning fortunes. This is not for the first time that National Herald is embarrassing the Congress, in fact, yesterday itself National Herald compared the Rafale deal with the Bofors scandal. ‘Rafale: Modi’s Bofors’ was the main headline of its story. It must be borne in mind that the Congress never admitted to financial impropriety in the Bofors deal. It seems that the Congress mouthpiece has now accidentally admitted that Bofors deal was indeed a scandal. BJP spokesperson rightly concluded that “As far as National Herald is concerned, it is a newspaper which belongs to Rahul Gandhi and it has behaved like him. It does not know to say yes or no”.