Congress celebrates after 3-0 win in state elections

Mumbai/Chandigarh/Itanagar, Oct 22 (IANS) A triumphant Congress retained power in Maharashtra, Haryana and Arunachal Pradesh in the first national popularity test following the Lok Sabha ballot of May, leaving a divided opposition licking its wounds.

In the most crucial of all three states, the Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost the battle for power for a third time in a row and conceded defeat to the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) alliance just four hours after the vote count started at 8 a.m.

Political analysts said the Congress-NCP alliance could end up with some 140 seats in the 288-member Maharashtra assembly. Independents, rebels and smaller groups could corner over 40 seats. The Shiv Sena and BJP would not touch even the 100-mark.

The Congress swept the 60-seat Arunachal Pradesh as widely expected but, contrary to what most pundits had predicted, managed only a slender win in Haryana, where it had been supremely confident of bagging two thirds of all seats in the 90-member legislature.

Nevertheless, celebrations erupted outside Congress president Sonia Gandhi's house and the Congress headquarters in the heart of the Indian capital. Congress supporters set off firecrackers while others raised slogans and waved posters of Sonia Gandhi and her son and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi.

In Mumbai, India's financial capital, Congress Chief Minister Ashok Chavan, who took charge of Maharashtra only after the November 2008 terror attack, said the Congress-NCP alliance would form a government again and his own party would be the single largest in the house.

His statement came as the Congress put up a strong showing all across Maharashtra, eclipsing its own ally the NCP, while the BJP suffered a rout in comparison to its fighting ally the Shiv Sena.

Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) put up an impressive show weaning away traditional Shiv Sena votes -- as it did in the Lok Sabha election.

Among the first victors in Maharashtra were Muslim cleric Maulana Mufti Ismail, who won from Malegaon, and MNS candidate Mangesh Sangle in Vikhroli (Mumbai northeast). The Malegaon winner is from the Jan Surajya Party of the Republican Left Democratic Front alliance of 18 parties.

Shiv Sena stalwart and former Lok Sabha speaker Manohar Joshi as well as Maharashtra's BJP leaders accepted defeat saying they needed to ponder why they lost the Oct 13 assembly elections.

State BJP secretary Vinod Tawade said the Shiv Sena and BJP would do a lot of 'soul-searching'.

BJP's Smirit Irani added: 'We are going through challenging times. There are many reasons to rethink.'

But BJP leader Muqtar Abbas Naqvi struck a discordant note in New Delhi, blaming the electronic voting machines (EVMs) for its defeats, saying the EVMs had become 'electronic victory machines' for the Congress. 'It is a sponsored victory for the Congress.'

In Arunachal Pradesh, a sprawling state in the northeast, the ruling Congress surged ahead in 31 of the 60 seats. Balloting took place Oct 13 for 57 seats after three candidates were elected unopposed.

The three included Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu and two more Congress members, Tsewang Dhondup and Jambey Tashi. A total of 154 candidates were in the fray, the Congress alone fielding candidates in all seats.

The Congress inched towards a simple majority in the 90-member Haryana legislature, with officials stating that it could win 45 seats, which is the midway mark.

Only hours earlier, a seemingly overconfident Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda had declared that the Congress could sweep the state and win a 'two-third majority'.

The Congress won 67 seats in the February 2005 elections. To Hooda's shock, the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) fared much better than expected and was poised to win in nearly 25 constituencies.

In contrast, the BJP, which broke its alliance with the INLD just before the elections, suffered a drubbing.