Rahul Gandhi believes that democracy has been preserved in Jammu and Kashmir and Constitution upheld because the National Conference-Congress alliance has come to power there. However, he does not seem to be ready to accept the results of Haryana as he was expecting to win there, but didn’t. He has said that “We are analysing the unexpected results of Haryana. We will inform the Election Commission about the complaints coming from many assembly constituencies.” His party leaders, Jairam Ramesh and Pawan Khera went to the extent of describing the results as “unacceptable” and alleged that EVM tampering had taken place. The party even said that they wouldn’t accept the results. Following this, the Election Commission of India wrote a letter to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Wednesday, criticising such statements as “unprecedented” and “far from a legitimate part of free speech and expression and moves towards an undemocratic rejection of the will of the people expressed in accordance with the Statutory and Regulatory electoral framework, uniformly applied across all elections in the country including J&K and Haryana.” Pawan Khera, who had said that the Haryana results were “the victory of the system and the defeat of democracy”, after a meeting with the ECI on Wednesday said that the party has asked for an investigation of certain EVMs.
The Congress is happy when the BJP cannot cross the majority mark in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and falls far short of the 400 seats that the party and the exit polls had claimed it would get. In fact, the BJP could not even cross 272 and got stuck at 240—“unexpected results” as far as the party was concerned. But there was no murmur in the BJP about any electoral manipulation such as rigging in states that are governed by the Opposition. The party quietly accepted the results. In contrast, the problem with the Congress is that lately, every time it loses an election, it brings up the bogey of EVM manipulation. This is because it starts believing in its own propaganda that its electoral strategy of making caste the centre point of its campaign is a winning strategy.
A closer look at the Haryana results shows that the BJP strategy of micro-managing every seat paid off, as well as its hard work on the ground, backed by the RSS. There is also a buzz that this time around people saw through the claims Congress had made ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, about the BJP ending reservation and changing the Constitution. In the general elections, a section of voters had moved away from the BJP believing these claims. These people may have moved back to the BJP fold. Also, it seems the Congress, in its pursuit of issues such as farmers’ agitation, Agniveer, wrestlers’ protests, mistook them to be resonating with the majority of voters. The majority of voters were watching everything in silence, from the background. Congress also did not realise that people had not forgotten the “misrule” by its governments earlier. In the last 10 years a lot of development has taken place, many schemes have been implemented, all of which made their impact felt. Plus, the new Chief Minister, Nayab Singh Saini proved to be a huge hit with the people.
Congress’ primary problem was over-confidence. It was busy discussing who its Chief Minister would be, than micro-managing the election. Its over-reliance on the Hooda factor did not help it. Increasingly, the party got identified with one caste, which was not liked by the other castes. Too much factionalism in the party made things even more difficult. The Dalit voter more or less abandoned the Congress as the perception grew that Kumari Selja, a Dalit, was not being given her due. Mistakes were made in candidate selection.
There are several such factors that contributed to Congress’ defeat. To ignore its own failings and blame everything on EVMs is fundamentally dishonest and will do a lot of damage to the voter psyche. Congress’ actions amount to casting aspersions on the very fundamentals of Indian democracy. It cannot be a case where EVMs work and democracy wins only when Congress wins, and EVMs are hacked and democracy fails when BJP wins. At this rate, even die-hard Congress supporters will find it difficult to believe the party’s claims. Hence, instead of trying to question the results, the Congress needs to do a seat-by-seat analysis to find out why the voters could not trust it with the state.
The Congress should stop behaving like a sore loser.
