Rahul lost Amethi in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and Congress could only win Rae Bareli contested by Sonia Gandhi. Now there is a serious fear that Congress may not win even one of the 80 seats in UP in the 2024 general elections. It may also become a non-player in the 13 Lok Sabha seats that Punjab has, as also a handful in the other states that went to polls.
AAP, which is already calling itself Congress’ “national” and “natural” replacement, is expected to full-throttle in BJP-held Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat which go to the polls late-2022, in a bid to position itself as the alternative anti-establishment force.
Insiders acknowledge a vulnerability here, as AAP’s push will hurt the voter consolidation in favour of Congress. Its success will be a major setback for the grand old party which fancied its chances in Gujarat, where it came very close to dislodging BJP in 2017, and in Himachal where it recently swept Lok Sabha and assembly by-elections.
Congress has been weighed down by absentee leadership triggered by Rahul Gandhi’s resignation following the debacle in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. He has refused to take back the post, but without decisively rebuffing entreaties from insiders over the last three years. Many fear the leadership issue may not matter anymore as the damage is now beyond repair. The dissident group G-23 had made the leadership vacuum its main plank in a charter of demands for organisational reforms.
The party has struggled to craft a response to BJP’s ‘Hindutva’ plank because of a wariness that it could be ambushed with the “appeasement” charge. The recourse to populism, as manifest in the backpedalling on the pension scheme, has not worked either.
As Congress shrinks nationally, limited to two state governments in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, younger leaders are likely to be more despondent about their future. The party is looking at an amplified exodus to rival camps, following the defections of former Union ministers Jitin Prasada, RPN Singh and Jyotiraditya Scindia over the last two years. There are even fears that the party may split in some states that are beset with Congress decline over the years.
Pressure will now be on CMs Bhupesh Baghel and Ashok Gehlot as their states are up for re-election in November 2023.
For die-hard Congressmen, a big disappointment was battlefield UP, where strategists had gambled on the draw of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. Popular with cadre and bearing the resemblance and gait of her illustrious grandmother, she was being seen as an alternative to Rahul should the need arise. Even this hope may be dead now.