New Delhi: Delhi Congress chief Devender Yadav said on Monday that the party’s strategy in the city would be to focus on minority and Dalit comunities in the coming days.
He pointed out that Congress’s electoral defeat was due to AAP successfully drawing Dalit and minority voters.
“The anti-BJP votes of Dalits and minorities went to AAP on the mistaken premise that AAP would form a govt, but the rest of the city didn’t show faith in the party, and it failed to perform. However, the diversion of Dalit and minority votes to AAP affected the prospects of the Congress. The situation automatically benefited the BJP,” Yadav said.
After being out of power in Delhi for 11 years, Congress focused its efforts on reclaiming its core vote bank but was unsuccessful. It failed to get any seat. BJP secured 48, while AAP won 22.
Yadav highlighted that among AAP’s 22 seats, eight were reserved for Scheduled Castes, and four were minority-dominated. “Then there were four other seats which had a major population of minorities. This is the segment which doesn’t want to vote BJP, and ideally, this should have come to us. We will work hard in the coming days, fight for their issues,” Yadav said.
Thanking the party workers for their dedication, he said: “I am proud of my cadres. They did a very good job on the ground. We retained our cadre votes, which went up to 6.5%, but we did not get the votes of two segments of our sympathisers, Dalits and Muslims, which went to AAP,” he said.
He observed that Dalits and minorities were uncomfortable with BJP’s political stance and primarily aimed to prevent BJP from forming the govt.
Following improved Lok Sabha poll results in alliance with AAP, Congress began assembly poll preparations early. They did a month-long Delhi Nyay Yatra in Nov-Dec across all 70 constituencies, led by Yadav.
Senior Congress official Chattar Singh said that though the party’s vote share didn’t increase dramatically, the party managed to bring Congress back into the conscience of the people.
“Our candidates performed much better than the last time. Ten candidates got more than 10% vote share this time, while there were just six in the 2020 assembly polls ,” Singh said.
Courtesy : TOI
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