It was people’s verdict and their victory, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee tweeted as the Congress was ahead in three states with votes being counted in the assembly elections, billed as the semi-final before next year’s Lok Sabha polls.

All three states — Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh — were won last time by the BJP, which had also won 60 of the 65 total parliament seats in these states in the 2014 general elections.

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Votes are also being counted in Telangana, where K Chandrashekhar Rao’s Telangana Rashtriya Samiti (TRS) has raced to a massive lead, validating his decision to call early elections. In Mizoram, the Congress’ last bastion in the state, the Mizo National Front is ahead.

“Victory of democracy and victory against injustice, atrocities, destruction of institutions, misuse of agencies, no work for poor people, farmers, youth, Dalits, SC, ST, OBC, minorities and general caste,” Banerjee tweeted.

“Semifinal proves that BJP is nowhere in all the states. This is a real democratic indication of 2019 final match. Ultimately, people are always the ‘man of the match’ of democracy. My congrats to the winners,” she said.

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Banerjee was among the 21 opposition party leaders who on Monday agreed to work together to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and “stop their assault on the Constitution and institutions such as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Election Commission” in a key meeting ahead of the Lok Sabha election next year.

The leaders decided to lay a roadmap for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections to oust the BJP from power by evolving a common strategy.

“In the course of the next few months, we will place before the people of the country, a comprehensive programme of work anchored in complete transparency and accountability,” read a joint statement issued after the meeting.

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The parties also appealed to all “liberal, progressive and secular forces to join them in their battle to save the Constitution and protect parliamentary democracy”.

First Published: Dec 11, 2018 12:16 IST