Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh has said that BJP has met with clear defeat in the recently-concluded Jharkhand assembly elections and its tally has dipped further.
"BJP's dream of forming a government in Jharkhand has been foiled and the number of seats that it got this time has come down from the last occasion, which points to clear defeat," Singh told reporters here late last night.
The BJP-JD(U) alliance got 20 seats in the 81-member Jharkhand Assembly while the Congress-JVM (P) alliance with 25 seats (Cong-14 and JVM-P-11) has emerged as the single largest alliance. The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) with 18 assembly seats in its kitty, emerged as the single largest party after the elections threw up a hung House.
On Congress' role in the formation of the next government in Jharkhand, Singh said the decision in this regard lay with party president Sonia Gandhi and other senior leaders.
He however, said that JMM leader Shibu Soren was still part of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA). "Soren was earlier also part of the UPA... and he still continues to be in it," Singh said. PTI