Gujarat election results 2022: Congress likely to lose leader of opposition's post in the state

Gujarat election results 2022: More humiliation seems to be coming on the way of Congress as the party has managed to win only 16 seats in the Gujarat Assembly Elections. Adding insult to the injury, the aged-old party is likely to lose the post of the Leader of Opposition in the state as well.

Gujarat's assembly has 182 seats. A party, however, needs at least 10 per cent of seats to stay on the post of Leader of Opposition. With the Congress registering its worst performance in the Gujarat elections 2022, it couldn’t even manage to have the numbers needed to appoint a leader of opposition in the state.

However, this is not the case only in Gujarat but even in the centre too, the Congress couldn't appoint a LoP after two national elections, one in 2014 and the other in 2019. It is because the party could bag only 44 and 52 seats, respectively. Although it tried to appoint Mallikarjun Kharge as the LoP, the then Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan denied doing so as per the rules.

Mr Kharge, notably, is the first Congress chief in two decades who does not belong to Gandhi family.

Mr Kharge was invited to meetings of a panel to appoint the anti-corruption body Lokpal in the first term of the Modi government that began in 2014. However, he did not accept the invitation to protest against the speaker’s decision for not appointing as LoP.

BJP is not the one to be blamed here as the Congress, during its rule, had also done the same with the opposition back in 1980 and 1984. It has not given the post of LoP to any party after the Congress won with massive numbers in the national elections.

The BJP, in the Gujarat assembly elections 2022, is all set to create a record and sweep the state yet again. Meanwhile, Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel also won the Ghatlodia seat.