GOP’s next job: Fix org

Cong got much of its messaging rights. But BJP won 70% of direct contests. Cong needs better ground game

Genius, the saying goes, is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Congress’s 99 seats reflect the 99% perspiration the party put into making the INDIA idea work. With the return on Thursday of a Congress rebel who won as an Independent on Sangli LS seat, Congress touched the 100 MP-mark. This shouldn’t lull the party into complacency. While Congress’s strategy to contest on the least number of seats bore fruit as did Rahul Gandhi’s insistence on fighting the election on two planks, Constitution-led ideology and party manifesto, the party has much work to do.

Staying rooted | Through five years of turmoil in 48-LS seat Maharashtra, since 2019 assembly election, Congress – the state’s weakest party for over a decade – has held its own. It won the largest number of LS seats, high-profile defections had no impact. This, when Congress couldn’t find candidates of heft willing to contest on several seats, including in Mumbai. That Congress’s Mumbai North West candidate, Dharavi MLA Varsha Gaikwad, just 49, and a rare Dalit nominee on a general seat, beat BJP’s Ujjwal Nikam with 49% vote share, is also a nod to voters’ comfort with roping in Gen Next netas into larger electoral battles.

UP & caste | Fielding a Gandhi loyalist in Amethi, choosing Rae Bareli for Rahul, ceding the UP space to Akhilesh, all paid off. UP results showed Rahul-styled Congress had struck a chord, with an ideology at a distance from GOP’s waffling politics that had sent the party into perpetual decline. UP results show there are takers for a New Congress, that’s re-inventing itself from being an upper-caste one engaged in ‘Dalit uplift’, to one that seizes the Constitution’s promise of equality to (a) make everyday-caste visible, and (b) pragmatically align with caste parties.

Finding, filling gaps | If intermediate castes, Lingayats in Karnataka, and Jats in Rajasthan, split their votes between BJP and Congress, the party’s five Haryana wins were constituencies central to the farmers’ protest. Punjab was fought entirely at the assembly segment level, local units winning Congress 7 of state’s 13.

Note, though, in 215 seats, where BJP and Congress were in direct fights, BJP won over 70% seats. Congress had its communication pat, but has its task cut out before it can take on BJP seat by seat. That can only happen if it focuses on firming up that ‘1% inspiration’ to recreate its ‘missing’ organisation, essential if Congress is to convert its support into political assets. 

END OF ARTICLE