Just as laddoos arrived at 24, Akbar Road from the Bengali Market, the counting trends began to flash on the TV screens. Within an hour and a half, laddoos were hurriedly packed and returned. The Congress’ hopes of netting three states were dashed, clouding and eclipsing the party’s one of the best and most spectacular performances in Telangana.
The Congress’ confidence in retaining Chhattisgarh, winning Madhya Pradesh and even staying in power in Rajasthan was so overwhelming that ordering laddoos was considered the most befitting thing. In fact, a search was on, for a suitable word to dub Mallikarjun Kharge, the 88th president of the AICC, as the most auspicious leader for the grand old party. Kharge had a book released on him a few days ago, where some speakers had projected him as a ‘future prime minister’.
Bravado apart, the Congress has reasons to blame itself for the severe poll debacle in the Hindi heartland. The party’s religious outreach programme failed miserably in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Voters were neither interested nor attracted towards Kamal Nath projecting himself as a devout Hanuman bhakt or a Sanatan Dharmi. They displayed a similar attitude towards Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel’s thrust for the Ram Gaman Path, cow dung purchase schemes, etc.
Organisationally, the Congress central leadership allowed a free hand to Kamal Nath, Ashok Gehlot and Bhupesh Baghel without having any checks or accountability. The party’s in-house election management mechanism was nowhere in sight.
Rahul Gandhi’s plank of the caste-based census and reservations was not debated or discussed within the party, yet Rahul went on talking about it in every election meeting. It is interesting that the state leadership of the Congress in the three states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh did not make the caste quota a key electoral issue. This was perhaps due to the fact that the party lacked effective OBC leaders and good orators to make it a talking point. The plank had an adverse impact on the upper caste. Similarly, Priyanka Gandhi’s move to attack Jyotiraditya Scindia galvanised his supporters and cadre who were reportedly unhappy with the BJP’s ticket distribution. Scindia himself worked tirelessly to make BJP nominees win in order to blunt the impact of Priyanka’s jibe.
In Rajasthan, the biggest culprit seems to be Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot himself. He is the singular reason why the Congress lost in Rajasthan and performed so miserably. Gehlot, the magician, would go down in history as the only leader in the country and across parties under whose leadership, the Congress party has never won but lost elections thrice i.e. in 2003, 2013 and 2023. He has a history of performing badly, and in fact, the Congress was reduced to 21 seats in 2013, the worst-ever defeat of the party in Rajasthan. He is also an exception as he became a chief minister when elections were fought under different leaders, like Paras Ram Madrena in 1998, CP Joshi in 2008, and Sachin Pilot in 2018, thanks to manipulation and machinations of the old guard.
Gehlot’s survival instincts were legendary. On September 25, 2022, he defied the Congress leadership by refusing to hold a CLP meeting in Jaipur where Mallikarjun Kharge and Ajay Maken were AICC observers. Gehlot remained unscathed for some inexplicit reasons till the last day in office. This was more glaring, considering in Jaipur, he remained unpopular among his own council of ministers and leaned heavily on a small band of coterie. In fact, trust remained in short supply between September 25, 2022, and December 3, 2023, between him and the AICC headquarters, 24 Akbar Road.
There were many complaints about some of his close aides as a section of the bureaucracy, ministers and party MLAs had alleged ill-treatment from Gehlot’s coterie. The role of a poll strategist was also often brought into question. There were question marks over the design of Gehlot’s election campaign with allegations that tag lines such as “Congress phir se” sounded much like Rajasthan 2018 BJP tagline “BJP phir se”. A similar tagline “kaho dil se, BJP phir se” was used in the 2012 Himachal Pradesh campaign by the BJP. On the day when the manifesto was launched with the Congress promising to provide a gas cylinder for Rs 400, the ad issued by the agency mentioned it for Rs 500 in a prominent Hindi daily published from Jaipur.
The December 3, 2023, Assembly election results would haunt Congress for a long time. The defeat in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh has obscured the party’s grand success in Hyderabad. The Congress in Telangana has managed to stage a comeback, handing over power to a regional force. This sort of comeback has been eluding the party in Uttar Pradesh, Bengal, Odisha and a number of other states.
The writer is a Visiting Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation. A well-known political analyst, he has written several books, including ‘24 Akbar Road’ and ‘Sonia: A Biography’. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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