Congress slide continues as it fails to secure single seat among 11 elected to RS

The unanimous election of ten MPs from Uttar Pradesh and one from Uttarakhand to Rajya Sabha on Monday explicitly highlighted the Congress' continuous downward slide and irrelevance of the grand old party in the Indian political arena in past six years after BJP came to power at the Centre in 2014.

After the election of new MPs, the Congress' tally has dropped to 38 from 40 in the Upper House. The party has 51 Lok Sabha MPs following its dismissal performance in two consecutive general elections since 2014.

In the Lower House, the Congress does not have a single MP from Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur.

On Monday, eight of the elected members in Uttar Pradesh belong to BJP while one each is from the Samajwadi Party and the BSP.

The ten Rajya Sabha members from Uttar Pradesh who are retiring on November 25 include three from BJP -- Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, Arun Singh and Neeraj Shekhar, four from SP - Chandrapal Singh Yadav, Ram Gopal Yadav, Ram Prakash Verma, and Javed Ali Khan, two from BSP -- Rajaram and Veer Singh, and PL Punia of the Congress.

Congress leader Raj Babbar is retiring as Rajya Sabha member from Uttarakhand. The seat has been secured by the BJP's Naresh Bansal.

Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, Neeraj Shekhar, Arun Singh and Ram Gopal Yadav have been re-elected to the upper House as BJP members.

In March this year, Congress lost its government in Madhya Pradesh this year following the resignation of 22 party MLAs paving the way for BJP's Shivraj Singh Chouhan to take over as Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister for the fourth time.

Congress also seems to have lost its relevance in big states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal as the party's seats are continuously reduced.

On the other side, the BJP's strength in the upper House has now gone up to 92 from 86 and the rise in numbers is likely to make it easy for the ruling party to get legislation passed in the 245-member House with the support of allies and friendly parties.

A Congress Rajya Sabha MP, who did not want to be named, said that the party's strength in the Upper House was apparently at a "historic low" but it is expecting "positive news" from assembly polls in Bihar and assembly by-polls in Madhya Pradesh.

Congress has forged an alliance with Rashtriya Janata dal (RJD) and put up 70 candidates in the election to 243-member Bihar Assembly.

(ANI)