Daijiworld Media Network - Mangaluru (MS)
Mangaluru, May 24: Victory has eluded the Congress party in the Lok Sabha elections that have taken place in the district of Dakshina Kannada (DK) since 1991.
From 1951 to 1991 Congress had won for nine consecutive times from DK in the Lok Sabha elections. However, BJP put the brakes for the victory of Congress in 1991 and it has extended its streak to eight consecutive elections.
Dhanajay Kumar from BJP was the first who drew the first blood in 1991 by defeating Janardhana Poojary of Congress. This got repeated in the 1996 elections also. In 1998 Dhananjay Kumar won for the third consecutive time against Janardhana Poojary. In 1999 Dhananjay Kumar made it four in a row. This time the losing candidate was Veerappa Moily from the Congress.
In 2004, D V Sadananda Gowda represented BJP and defeated Veerappa Moily of Congress. In 2009, Congress fielded Janardhana Poojary again. However, this time around Nalin Kumar from BJP was victorious. In 2014 the scene got repeated and Nalin won for the second time in succession. Now, in the 2019 elections, Nalin has scored a hat-trick and Mithun Rai was the losing candidate from the Congress Party.
Post-mortem of the defeat of Congress in the just concluded Lok Sabha elections have already begun. It is said that one of the main reason is choosing the candidate at the very last moment. Mithun Rai was chosen as the Congress candidate just three days before the filing of nominations. This left with very little time for the party to plan any strategy. All it could get was a paltry 25 days for the campaign. However, it was known that Nalin would be the candidate of BJP and the activists of the party had started working since a year.
Second important reason that is being cited for the defeat of Congress is the non-arrival of any influential leaders of the national level of the party to the district. Only state level leaders like D K Shivakumar, KPCC president Dinesh Gundu Rao, C M Ibrahim and Dr Jayamala had taken part in the campaign for Mithun. CM Kumaraswamy had just participated in a campaign meeting at Sullia. Only Shatrugna Sinha was the star campaigner for the party, who participated in a meeting at Mudipu.
Congress could not campaign at the booth level due to the late nomination of the candidate. In BJP, the respective MLAs of the seven legislative constituencies that come under the DK Lok Sabha constituency, had taken the responsibility of campaigning for Nalin.
Apart from all the above, even the non-cooperation of the senior and eminent leaders of the Congress party during the campaigning also affected the polling. The leaders campaigned only in their respective legislative constituencies but never worked as a team.