Another Cong setback further erodes its Parl polls advantage

The summer of 2024 is becoming a distant memory for the Congress.
Back in June, the party managed to win more seats than it did in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections taken together, and reduce the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to its lowest tally since 2014 –– never mind that the national political hegemon still ended up with more seats on its own than all constituents of the Congress-led INDIA bloc.
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The loss in the Haryana elections (which everyone expected it to win), and poor performance in J&K, took away some of the sheen of its Lok Sabha performance. Now, its drubbing in Maharashtra has, apart from reacquainting the party with its old bugbear –– it loses head-to-head contests to the BJP –– also raised questions about its standing to head the national opposition alliance. Of the 101 seats the party contested in Maharashtra, it won 16, a strike rate of a mere 15.8%.
As the head of the Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance that managed to win a paltry 50 seats, the Congress has to take responsibility for running an unimaginative campaign, and for not ensuring harmony between the alliance partners. The party which, between 2004 and 2014, rewrote the rulebook on welfare economics, and won the states of Karnataka and Telangana on the strength of its welfare guarantees, obstinately hung on to its main pitch during the Lok Sabha campaign –– that the BJP would change the Constitution, and take away the benefits of reservation; and that it (the Congress) would push for a caste survey to spread the benefits of reservation equitably. Unfortunately for the Congress, the BJP had successfully countered both even before the Haryana assembly elections.
The Maharashtra results come as a blow when the Congress was ready to take on the BJP over the indictment of Adani group chief Gautam Adani and others by the US attorney’s court in New York over charges of $265 million bribery to officials in some Indian states. Some of its allies had been less enthusiastic about chasing the Adani issue .
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“Now, the Congress can’t force the alliance to spend its entire energy on Adani in the upcoming winter session of Parliament as some INDIA parties will be interested to raise other pro-people issues,” said a floor leader of a non-Congress opposition party.
The inability to gain ground outside south India remains the biggest concern for the Congress party. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi termed the Congress a parasite that lives off its allies. “The Congress has become a parasitic party after 2014. It swallows up the votes of its allies,” Modi said in the Lok Sabha earlier this year, replying to the President’s address.
“The Maharashtra failure will make INDIA allies more sceptical of the Congress’s abilities,” argued a senior INDIA bloc leader. “And with Delhi and Bihar polls due next year, the Congress has a slim chance of electoral revival in key battleground states. The string of losses will also lead to recalibration of seat pacts between the Congress and its partners.”
In Maharashtra, the Congress lost 56 of the 66 seats where it took on the BJP. This, in a state, where the Congress itself won 13 seats and the MVA, 30 (of the total of 48) in the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year. The party was hoping it could repeat that performance –– especially after its Haryana defeat.
“It was a script similar to Haryana in many senses,” said a Congress leader involved in the campaign, “In Haryana both the BJP and the Congress got five seats each in the Lok Sabha. We were expected to win the state but lost miserably. We didn’t learn our lessons from Haryana.”
Another Congress leader pointed to the absence of a coherent campaign premised on welfare, which has become the one constant in successful campaigns over the past two years.
“The package of sops we offered worked well in Karnataka and Telangana. But in some states, the BJP has delivered an improved package. Also, we kept on harping on its pet theme of ‘saving the Constitution’ –– the core pitch for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls,” added this person who asked not to be identified.
To be sure, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha-Congress alliance managed to win Jharkhand, giving the INDIA bloc some breathing space in the Hindi belt, where the BJP remains a dominant force. But even in this state, the Congress won because of the JMM.
The Congress’s inability to take on the BJP in direct contests, particularly in vast political trenches of northern India has impacted the party’s overall performance and kept the party out of power in both the Centre and in large number of states.
The larger goal of the Congress is to improve its strike rate in northern India –– something it has failed to do so far. In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress won 27 of its 99 seats from north India — even as the BJP got 154 of its 240 seats from the north Indian states.
Congress strategists point out how it has lost vital ground in north India as it conceded defeat to the BJP in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh last year. But the scale of those losses pales when compared to that in Maharashtra.