The Congress is confident of winning the Assembly elections in Goa and Uttarakhand, but it is prepared for any eventuality.
It is especially ready to thwart any poaching – as had happened in Goa in 2017, when its majority of 17 seats was upturned by the BJP by engineering mass defections.
The party has rushed senior Karnataka leader DK Shiv Kumar to Panjim to help the AICC in-charge of the state and the Goa party president grapple with any such prospect.
Anticipating "horse-trading," the Trinamool Congress has deployed Abhishek Banerjee, Prashant Kishor and Derek O'Brien to cope with any such situation. The TMC hopes to fare well in Goa; the exit polls, too, indicated that its alliance would manage to get a couple of seats in the state. In the India Today-Axis exit polls, the TMC-Maharastrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) alliance is projected to win 2-5 assembly seats and could emerge as the third biggest front in the coastal state.
The TMC is also inclined to settle for a pre-poll alliance with the Congress party and has said that if the BJP returns to power, the Congress should be blamed for it.
Meanwhile, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel is being sent to Dehradun to ensure the party does not face any difficulty in Uttarakhand in the post result scenario.
The party leadership is also concerned over a sharp divergence of opinion among the party's senior leaders in Uttarakhand, amid speculation that former Chief Minister Harish Rawat (71) may even organise a split in the party, if he is denied the CM’s post. He quit as the AICC general secretary just before the polls, so that he in the running after the results are out.
In Uttar Pradesh, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi herself is holding the fort and will handle the imponderables in an evolving situation. The party has also sent its senior leaders to Punjab and Manipur, where the post-result situation may be equally fluid.
"We are expecting a hung assembly in Punjab with Congress as the single-largest party. Already, a few candidates from other parties are in touch with our senior leaders. They are ready to return to the Congress in case we are short of a majority,” sources told a news portal.
Chhatisgarh health minister TS Singh Deo, Mukul Wasnik and Lok Sabha MP Vincent Pala will be in Manipur as observers.
The Congress is also facing heightened dissident activity, with leaders like Kapil Sibal and Anand Sharma pressing for a revamp of the party structure by holding internal elections, instead of allowing former Congress President Rahul Gandhi to continue with his back-seat driving.
They are exerting pressure that the organisational elections be conducted at the earliest and thereby end the culture of nominations in the party.
