Against drawing conclusions for general elections from state elections: Jairam Ramesh

Congress leader and former Cabinet minister Jairam Ramesh Wednesday cautioned against drawing conclusions about the 2019 general elections based on the results of the Assembly elections in five states.

Speaking at a book launch, Ramesh said the state elections were fought on completely different issues and its results should not be a yardsticks to gauge the outcome of the national elections.

The Congress wrested control of the BJP-ruled states of Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

"I don't subscribe to the semifinal and final concept (of elections). State-level elections are organically different...I will be cautious in drawing national level conclusions from what are essentially state level elections," he said.

"The best example of this was when in 1984 Rajiv Gandhi and the Congress took 27 of the 28 seats in Lok Sabha elections in Karnataka and three months later Ramakrishna Hegde and the Janata Party got around 140 out of the 224 seats in the Assembly. So, a completely different result," he said.

However, he said the Congress' victories in the three states were definitely a morale booster and would help the party psychologically as it prepared for the 2019 polls.

Buoyed with electoral gains in these three states, the grand old party is now in power in six states, including Punjab, Karnataka and Puducherry, but the real challenge before the Congress is defeating the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls and it is widely felt it will need help of other opposition parties for that.

For the moment, the Congress has stemmed its electoral decline by sweeping Chhattisgarh and edging out the BJP in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, signalling its preparedness for 2019 elections which are building up as a "BJP-versus-all" battle.