New Delhi: As the BJP is faced with an imminent defeat in Jharkhand, senior Congress leader P Chidambaram took a jibe at the saffron party and pointed to party’s poor performance in assembly polls like Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand.

“Dented in Haryana, Denied in Maharashtra, Defeated in Jharkhand. That is the story of the BJP in 2019. All non-BJP parties must raise their sights and rally around the Congress to save the Constitution of India,” the senior leader said in a tweet.

As the Congress-JMM-RJD alliance steers closer to victory with 49 seats, the fortunes don’t look good for the BJP which is currently leading on 22 seats.

The results are in contrast with BJP’s performance in Lok Sabha polls where it returned to power with a thumping majority in May this year. The party suffered a similar fate in October during the Maharashtra and Haryana assembly elections as well.

In Maharashtra, BJP had contested both the Lok Sabha as well as the state elections in an alliance with the Shiv Sena. While the Narendra Modi-led party had secured 53% of the votes in the constituencies it contested in the general elections, this was reduced to 45% during the assembly polls in October.

This brought its tally in the state from 122 in 2014 to 105 this time around. The party eventually failed to form the government in the state after its ally Shiv Sena broke the alliance to form a government led by its chief Uddhav Thackeray with the support of the Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress.

Similarly, BJP had registered a landslide victory in Haryana during the Lok Sabha elections in May where it won all the 10 seats available in the state. In a show of absolute dominance, the party secured an impressive 58 per cent of the total vote-share.

However, this was not the case during the assembly elections in the northern state in October this year. The saffron party failed to secure a majority on its own in the 90-member strong house as its vote-share plummeted more than 20 percentage points to 36 per cent. After falling short of its own lofty targets, the BJP had to offer the deputy chief minister post to leader of rival party Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) Dushyant Chautala to form the government in Haryana.