Mangaluru: The Congress party’s performance in this time’s Mangaluru City Corporation election has been abismal compared to their performance in the previous MCC polls.
In the 2013 MCC election, the Congress bagged 35 seats, while the BJP won 20 seats. The remaining five seats were shared between the JDS, CPI(M), SDPI and independent candidates. This time, however, the BJP came out on top with a landslide victory, bagging 44 seats, while the Congress secured a mere 14 and the SDPI won 2 seats.
It can be recalled that senior Congress leader B Janardhana Poojary had, only a couple of days ago, predicted that the BJP would win in this MCC election. While justifying his prediction, he had said that some leaders in the Congress party had sidelined other senior party leaders, including himself, and that they did not consult him while selecting the candidates for the MCC polls.
District Congress committee president and MLC Hareesh Kumar had, however, said that the final list of party candidates was prepared only after consulting Poojary.
When mediapersons asked Hareesh Kumar for his clarification, he said that he had consulted Poojary over the phone before finalising the list of candidates.
After all of this, Poojary had convened another press conference and once again claimed that no one from the district Congress committee had consulted him either personally or over the phone in this regard.
He then predicted that November 14 would be a crucial day for the Congress leaders as the party would be defeated by the BJP in the MCC polls. Now that the results are out, it is clear that Poojary’s predictions have come true.