Once the only party to contest on all constituencies in parliamentary elections, it has come down to less than 330 seats out of 543 seats to adjust the I.N.D.I.A. alliance partners with a determination to defeat the ruling BJP in current parliamentary elections, a source says. The Congress started seriously working on alliance in 2004, and since then, the party never hesitated to accommodate other parties, the source says. In the last parliamentary elections, Congress contested 67 seats in UP, but in this 2024 elections, contesting only on 17 seats, the source says. This is a serious setback, in other words, because once upon a time, the presence of the party was in every village of the country, and now accepting the minimal seats offered by regional leaders indicates the quantum of political loss of ground, the party source says. How and why this situation has arrived? is a matter of serious research and lesson to other parties also source says.