Kamal Nath — former Chief Minister-turned-Madhya Pradesh Congress chief — has been asked to step down from the post, sources said a day after the party got decimated in a state they were sure of winning. The results yesterday showed the BJP had won 163 of the state’s 230 seats — more than double the Congress tally of 66.

The figures made it clear that the situation could not be further from the Congress reading of it.

The party, led by Mr Nath, was convinced that there was huge anti-incumbency against the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government.

So convinced of victory was the party that on the morning of the counting day, posters came up congratulating Mr Nath on his victory. By noon, they had to be pulled down as the BJP established a comfortable lead.

With the party being convinced that anti-incumbency against the BJP would push the election in their direction, the Congress campaign strategy lacked an edge.

The party did not hold massive protests against the BJP to register its presence. The number of public meetings and rallies they held was almost half that of the BJP. This affected communication with the voters and made the party unable to carry its message across, leaders confided in private.

Mr Nath’s other move — denying the promised five to seven seats to INDIA bloc partner Samajwadi Party — has earned it the wrath of the alliance partners.

Sharing of seats at the state level was expected to be the blueprint for the bloc’s one-on-one strategy for next year’s general elections — dubbed a do-or-die battle with the BJP.

“The Congress has not been able to understand the ground situation in Madhya Pradesh. What harm could have happened if they had given 5-7 seats to Akhilesh Yadav? What have they won now?” National Conference chief Omar Abdullah was quoted as saying by news agency Press Trust of India. 

“Judging the results of INDIA alliance in the state elections, if the situation is like this in the future, we cannot win,” he told reporters yesterday.

Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the Congress could have won Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan, but “some votes were cut by INDIA parties”.

“This is the truth. We had suggested a seat-sharing arrangement. They lost because of division of votes,” she told the state assembly today.

Senior Congress leader Manickam Tagore underscored the importance of alliances and said it is the state-level leaders in the Hindi heartland “who need to understand it”.

“It is tough for the Congress to understand the importance of alliances because in states like MP, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan there is no alliance politics,” Manickam Tagore told NDTV.

A section of party workers also confided that the party needs a new face and fresh energy in the state, where it has been led for decades by Kamal Nath and Digvijay Singh, both in their late ’70s. They pointed to Telangana where a new young leader, Revanth Reddy, has crafted a massive victory.

Cyclone Michaung live updates: Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are on high alert with severe storm, Cyclone Michaung, expected to make landfall today. Both states have been hit by heavy rains and thunderstorms in the last 24 hours. Five people died in rain-related incidents in Chennai. Two people died of electrocution while one was killed after a tree fell on him in the upmarket Besant Nagar area of the city, police said.

In Chennai, cars were swept away as floodwater flowed through the streets, while its airport, one of the busiest in India, shut operations until Tuesday morning.

A severe cyclonic storm has the potential to cause uprooting of small and medium trees, large-scale damage to hutments and mud houses, and partial damage to telephone and electric poles.

Here are the LIVE updates on Cyclone Michaung and Chennai Rains:

After spearheading the separate Telangana movement and leading his party to significant victories since 2014, a third term in office eluded Bharat Rasthra Samithi supremo K Chandrasekhar Rao, who lost to the Congress in the legislative assembly polls. This was BRS’ first defeat since the birth of Telangana in 2014.

The Congress won 64 seats in the 119-member Telangana assembly, while the BRS got only 39.

A week, it is said, is a long time in politics and, by that yardstick, nine-and-a-half years is an aeon. That is the anti-incumbency challenge that the BRS could not overcome.

In an extensive poll campaign, the party tried to highlight all its welfare schemes for the poor. However, the implementation of some schemes had given an inordinate amount of power to MLAs to decide on the distribution of funds, leading to allegations of discrimination as well as corruption.

KCR’s son and IT minister KT Rama Rao insisted that job creation and GDP growth in Telangana have been the highest in the country, but many sections complained that getting employment has been an issue.

Ahead of the elections, KTR had advised the Chief Minister to bring in fresh faces and not give tickets to nearly 30 MLAs, against whom anti-incumbency seemed to be building.

KCR did warn these MLAs to buck up and improve their performance but ended up giving poll tickets to all of them. The result: most of these seats went to the Congress.

On the other hand, 9 out of the 10 leaders who represented BRS for the first time emerged victorious.

To make a comeback, the party will also have to find a way to connect to the rural voters. Nearly half of the BRS’ 39 seats came from the Hyderabad region, where KTR’s pitch for development and IT parks seemed to resonate with the voters.

Congress staked claim to form the government on the night of the counting itself as experts say the party has several factions and is jittery despite winning a clear majority. The Telangana result was the only silver lining in an otherwise dismal day for the Congress, which lost in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan and failed to dislodge the BJP from Madhya Pradesh as well.