After yatra success, Congress is slipping back

Rahul Gandhi’s media team could have anticipated that the Congress leader would gain nothing from the Cambridge university outing except pillorying

The Bharat Jodo Yatra (BJY), which ended on January 30 in Srinagar, boosted the morale of the Congress, besides the image of Rahul Gandhi. But, in the month since then, the Congress has taken some missteps and reverted to a sort of default setting that has kept it dysfunctional since 2014.

For all the talk of reviving democracy and constitutionality in the nation, the Congress chose not to do so within its own structure at the Raipur plenary held between February 24 and 26. According to attendees, the mood was downbeat, and those who had hoped for elections to the CWC (Congress Working Committee) were outmanoeuvred.

The grand old party took one step back, after taking two steps forward through the BJY.

Next, the national leadership of the Congress decided to largely skip campaigning in the Northeast. After a dismal performance of winning just eight out of 180 seats in the three Northeast states of Meghalaya, Nagaland, and Tripura, the party argued these were small states that go with the trend of supporting the Union government. Even if this is partly true, it is politically unwise for the Congress to not invest in campaigning in a region that has 25 Lok Sabha seats (Assam included).

Read | Bharat Jodo Yatra: Walk that burnished Rahul Gandhi’s image

Gandhi — the face of the Congress while party President Mallikarjun Kharge handles organisational responsibilities — made one outing to Meghalaya that made news for his attack on the Trinamool Congress (TMC). At about the same time, Gandhi was also in the news with reports showing him skiing on the slopes of Gulmarg, Kashmir. After the BJY’s success, this was bad optics for any serious politician, and gave a sense of déjà vu of the period when Gandhi would disappear from public gaze for short stretches.

Cambridge university in the United Kingdom is an odd venue for an Indian politician to complain about the state of India’s democracy. Gandhi is not a public intellectual being asked to shed light on the goings on in India; he is the face of the principal opposition party that has access to platforms in India. It’s also a strange choice given the recent misleading narratives created by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ecosystem that label any critique of India from the West as an attack on the nation itself. Gandhi’s media team could have anticipated that he would gain nothing from the Cambridge outing except pillorying.

Despite these missteps by Congress’ national leadership, there are green shoots in the recent byelection results that are drawn from local factors.

The Congress’ win from the Kasba Peth seat, in Maharashtra, is significant because it was a seat held by the BJP for 28 years. Congress’ Ravindra Dhangekar won with the support of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray faction) and the Nationalist Congress Party, both in an alliance with the Congress. This bypoll was a matter of prestige for Thackeray whose government was brought down last year. Maharashtra sends 48 MPs to the Lok Sabha, the largest contingent after Uttar Pradesh.

Read | Rahul Gandhi's labours of Hercules have just begun

Also significant is the first victory of the Congress in the current West Bengal assembly from Sagardighi. Congress’ Bayron Biswas was backed by the Left. This win works against the idea of a national level united Opposition which includes Mamata Banerjee’s TMC. West Bengal sends 42 MPs to the Lok Sabha.

The BJP has gained ground in West Bengal ever since the TMC side lined the Left and the Congress from the political space in the state. Given this, the Congress-Left re-emergence might suit the TMC, and work against the BJP. The other outliers to the national Opposition led by the Congress include the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) in Telangana and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Punjab and Delhi.

The opposition parties have a better strike rate against the BJP at the national level when the Congress is the junior alliance partner to a regional party, as is the case in Tamil Nadu and in Bihar. The real test will be in states where the Congress directly faces off with the BJP without the buffer of a regional party, as is the case in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, among others.

As Opposition unity is unlikely to be a perfect scheme, the Congress also needs to rethink before alleging that parties that divide the opposition vote are the ‘B-team of the BJP’. That argument can be turned on its head and used against the Congress in states where the dominant regional forces do not wish to have a formal alliance with the grand old party. Besides West Bengal, this also includes Uttar Pradesh, where Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav has said that he will only ally with the Rashtriya Lok Dal. So far, he has shown no inclination to join hands with the Congress; but that could change if the national party were to win state elections that take place later this year.

(Saba Naqvi is a journalist and author.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.