FUTURE TENSE

The 10 states going to polls in the next two years account for 144 Lok Sabha seats, of which the Congress won just nine in 2019 even though it won assembly elections in three of them. In the last assembly polls, it won 502 or 39 per cent of the 1,273 seats in these 10 states. The number has now come down to 445, mostly because of defections.