New Delhi: Last month, as the Congress leadership reeled under the Haryana debacle, it received grim news from the country’s west coast—the party was fast losing ground in Maharashtra.
The party’s strategists there conveyed to the high command that the ruling Mahayuti alliance had taken a lead of “at least 8-10 percent” among the women voters in the poll-bound state.
“All indicators were showing that the party had lost the Lok Sabha edge. A clear 8-10 percent lead among women could not have been countered by promising to double the handout. The surveys that captured that we were losing ground were before seat-sharing talks. It was clear that after seat-sharing, the situation would be worse as the Congress is no match for the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) in election management,” a Congress functionary, who was involved in the party’s Maharashtra poll campaign, told ThePrint.
The Maharashtra verdict has underscored the Congress’s diminished influence in the state. On Saturday, it was routed, along with its Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) allies Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar).
It’s only Jharkhand, where the Congress is on the winning side, owing largely to the strong performance of the Hemant Soren-led Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), which is set to become the first party to lead two successive governments in the state carved out from Bihar in 2000.
In the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress had won 13 seats in Maharashtra, racing ahead of the rest, leading to calls from the party’s state unit to project someone from its stable as the Maha Vikas Aghadi’s (MVA) chief ministerial face. Nationally too, the Congress oozed confidence and aggression.
It coined a new slogan—”Sarkar tumhari, system humara (your government, our system)”—which captured, in some measure, its reading of the people’s verdict that saw the party winning 99 seats, nearly doubling its tally of 52 in 2019 and 44 in 2014.
The BJP, for the third consecutive time, emerged as the single largest party in Lok Sabha, but this time with 240 seats, well short of a simple majority, forcing it to depend on allies Telugu Desam Party and Janata Dal (United) to form the government.
Indeed, the elections gave the Congress many reasons to cheer, starting from the fact that it became eligible, after a decade, for the post of the Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha. The party passed a resolution requesting Rahul Gandhi to take up the position, which he did.
In his first speech as the LoP, Gandhi ticked all the right boxes. From reassuring the INDIA bloc allies that he will be the voice of not just the Congress, but the entire Opposition as LoP, to the framing of the political contest against BJP as ideological, he appeared more sure-footed than ever before.
He escalated his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, describing the latter as a “psychologically broken” man due to the underwhelming performance of the BJP, which settled for seats far less than its much vaunted target of “400 paar“.
Over the subsequent months, the government appeared jittery, making a series of U-turns and concessions—from restoring indexation benefits on property sales and withdrawing the contentious draft of the Broadcast Bill, to sending the Waqf Board Bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee for scrutiny and replacing the National Pension System (NPS) with the Unified Pension Scheme (UPS).
Ahead of the assembly elections in Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir, Gandhi, addressing a campaign rally, had said, “These days, the Opposition is running the government. We can get them to do anything we want.” Many saw in these lines a whiff of arrogance, but the Congress could sniff more victories on the horizon.
Then came the reality check. The Congress’s hopes of reclaiming Haryana from the BJP were dashed. The party’s performance was a drag on the overall performance of its alliance with the National Conference in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). In Maharashtra, it has performed dismally.
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‘Lack of drive in Maharashtra’
The party’s strategists in Maharashtra lament the lack of drive that the party displayed, despite getting forewarned of the traction that the Mahayuti campaign was gaining. “The Majhi Ladki Bahin scheme could not have been countered by promising to double the handout. Afterall, by then, women already had money in hand. And that matters in a state marked by acute agrarian distress,” said the leader.
The monthly financial assistance for women along with the promise of subsidised cylinders were the Congress’s counter to the ruling coalition’s Majhi Ladki Bahin (My Beloved Sister) Yojana, under which Rs 1,500 a month is given to eligible women in the 21-65 age group with a family income of less than Rs 2.5 lakh.
The Congress also mulled engaging professional survey teams to assess the ground reality, but it is learnt that it could not get MVA ally Shiv Sena (UBT) on board. “That was an indication of UBT’s faltering confidence level. At some point, we dropped the ball,” the Congress leader quoted above said, pointing out how Gandhi was missing from the state between 7 and 12 November—the week when the Mahayuti campaign was picking up.
During this period, Gandhi was campaigning for three days in Kerala’s Wayanad, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra was on the ticket.
Yet again, the Congress is staring at a long winter ahead. Its authority as the leader of the INDIA bloc will face questions, particularly in light of the victories scored by the Trinamool Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in the bypolls. The floor management of the INDIA bloc in the upcoming Parliament session will also reflect the Congress’s diminished aura.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
Also Read: Behind Congress’s shock defeat in Haryana, rebels, Independents & INDIA bloc allies
