There are two Congresses — one which is on a march with the Bharat Jodo Yatra and has detached itself from real politics and electoral performance and the other which is now left wondering what lies ahead.
In 2017, Congress won 77 seats in Gujarat, restricting the BJP to below 100. It etched its hold in Saurashtra’s tribal and rural belt. But in 2022, as BJP registered a historic win by breaking its previous record, the Congress dipped massively. The reasons are not surprising.
When News18.com travelled through the state, the party looked disinterested and detached from the campaigns. This despite the fact that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which grows at the cost of the Congress, was clearly focusing on the traditional vote bank of the Grand Old Party.
Most candidates News18.com spoke to said from funds to guidance, they were fighting and canvassing on their own with little support from the central leadership. For instance, Indranil Rajyaguru, who left the Congress to join AAP and then come back, is the strongman in Rajkot. Just ahead of polls, he had a swanky office meet and went aggressive on social media. But when we stepped into his office, it was clear that he was on his own. His daughter was his campaign manager and the only help he got was when Rahul Gandhi took a detour from the yatra for a rally in Rajkot.
It’s not that the Congress had not sent its leaders to Ahmedabad. But the problem is that barring a few who campaigned — like Pawan Khera in Surat — others stayed back at the Congress Bhawan in Ahmedabad. There was almost zero interaction with the party workers who thronged the headquarters. The social media campaign was slow, with sporadic inputs.
Even Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, who arrived towards the end and helped gain some traction with his speech, was too late. To give an example of poor planning, his press conference was held just an hour before Rahul Gandhi was scheduled to hold one in Madhya Pradesh during his yatra.
Not just this, the question is why did the yatra — which was in the neighbourhood — skip Gujarat? Many candidates and state party workers felt that the crowds and the traction could have helped, had Rahul Gandhi’s yatra crossed through at least the Congress strongholds like Saurashtra that the BJP was focusing on.
Several Congress leaders we spoke to told us that the top-heavy parachuting of leaders and strategists never works in elections. “The BJP also brings in their netas from the Centre but it’s never at the cost of the state leaders. In Congress, many of us who have been around for years, are seldom asked what we want or think.”
For Kharge, it’s a performance which may come to haunt him for a while as the Congress looks at critical state elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka. It also raises a pertinent question — Can a politician like Rahul Gandhi stay away from polls and justify his party’s complete disinterest in Gujarat just because of the yatra?
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