Six months after a spectacular victory, the Congress got a whiplash from Chhattisgarh's electorate.
Chhattisgarh elects 11 lawmakers.
The magnitude of the defeat manifests most in Durg Lok Sabha seat, where four assembly segments are represented by the CM and three ministers.
Durg was also the lone seat where the Congress won even when it was routed in all other seats in the 2014 Modi wave.
Vijay Baghel's near 4-lakh margin here, trampled upon the festering wounds of the Congress.
The final tally was 9-2 in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Chattisgarh.
Six months back, the Congress won 68 assembly seats in the House of 90, leaving just 15 to the Bharatiya Janata Party and the rest to smaller players.
BJP's gamble
The BJP's gamble to drop all the 10 sitting MPs -- including those who were winning for three or four terms in a row worked.
The BJP revival script also hinged on Prime Minister Modi’s cult.
The Modi magic sealed any chance the Congress had.
The BJP leadership handpicked fresh faces giving the party much-needed momentum after the defeat in the Assembly elections.
Projecting the national security narrative and flaunting the Centre’s welfare schemes, it managed to win the faith of voters.
In what was a referendum on Modi's performance, his party’s vote share in Chhattisgarh rose by at least 2 per cent from 48.7 per cent in 2014.
This time all the BJP candidates who won had a lead of 1 lakh plus votes.
The Congress party’s face -- Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel -- preferred a tit-for-tat approach to BJP's Modi-based strategy.
Baghel's strategy to target Modi failed to leave an impact on the voters.
"How can Amit Shah say 250 terrorists were killed. Modi ji should ask his own people," Baghel had said.
Factors like farm loan waiver, which the Congress Government was banking on, were swept aside in the Modi 2.0 tsunami.
The aggressive campaign of State BJP chief Vikram Usendi on the loan waiver scheme, telling farmers they have been cheated, clicked.
Moreover, rastravaad or nationalism punctured all political arithmetic.
It didn’t matter whether the candidate was Brahmin, Thakur, OBC or SC/ST.
All that mattered was whether you were with Modi or against him.
Modi’s appeal completely eclipsed Rahul Gandhi’s NYAY scheme.
The only consolation for the Congress was the victory in Maoist affected Bastar (ST) Lok Sabha seat.
The Congress won the seat after a gap of 22 years.
In 2014, all the five reserved seats were bagged by the saffron brigade.
The Congress also wrested the Korba Lok Sabha seat, which it lost in 2014.
