The Congress won a state after nearly five years, and there are some lessons from the campaign that the party could build on. For one, it was a localised campaign where issues like the old pension scheme, the Modi government’s Agniveer scheme and procurement price of apples hit a chord. More to the point the local leadership played a key role in the campaign with Priyanka Gandhi Vadra representing the Gandhi family aided by Rajiv Shukla, the state in-charge, Bhupesh Baghel, Sachin Pilot and the party chief Mallikarjun Kharge. It was a campaign where the personality of the leaders did not come into play and the BJP was robbed of its best plank—making it a personality contest by pitting Rahul Gandhi vs Narendra Modi. In fact, Rahul Gandhi gave the state a miss. This could be a model that could be replicated at the state Assembly level. So far Rahul’s track record in winning elections is a mixed bag. Sometimes he clicks as he did with the last Gujarat elections in 2017 but most times, he does not make much of a mark. Even then, in 2017 what worked for the Congress was that Rahul Gandhi ran a localised campaign raising issues of jobs, patidar reservations and an unwieldy GST. The latter worked well with the traders and shopkeepers who had just been hit by the GST on Diwali eve. However this time round, the Gujarat campaign in Gujarat lacked a big picture or a compelling narrative.
The Congress also made a wise decision in its choice of chief ministership by opting for Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu and Mukesh Agnihotri as deputy cm rather than Vir Bhadra Singh’s widow it has steered clear from the charge of dynasty politics. There is also the curious case of the third contender—the Aam Admi Party. In Himachal the AAP was missing from the campaign, making it a straight fight between the Congress and the BJP. However, in Gujarat it was a tri-cornered fight and the AAP ate into the Congress Party’s vote bank. As Amitabh Tiwari, election analyst and political commentator told NewsX on the Roundtable—if the Aam Admi Party had not contested the Gujarat polls, the Congress would have got 58 seats. (Another albeit unrelated but all the same interesting factoid that he told us was that the total number of votes polled by AAP in Gujarat were more than the sum of votes polled by the BJP and Congress in Himachal.)
So is there a strategy here somewhere—if the BJP has to be defeated at the national level then the opposition parties need to get together and come up with a formula that sees only a two way fight. For in a three corner fight the non BJP opposition will first end up harming each other before it makes a dent in the BJPs vote bank. The catch here is that one party – and in most cases it will be the Congress—will have to sit out the election and let the stronger regional party take on the BJP. That may work in defeating the BJP to an extent, but it will also damage the Congress party’s own vote bank.
To get back to an earlier point, what should Rahul Gandhi’s role be in a Kharge Congress? His Bharat Jodo Yatra is certainly getting traction on the ground. And is working wonders for his own image. No one can call him a Pappu anymore, but it still has to be tested electorally. In the meanwhile, expect Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s role as a campaigner to get more heft post the Himachal win. The Congress is also banking on Kharge’s connect with Karnataka to work in its favour in the coming state elections.
Clearly this is a time for some reinvention for the Grand Old Party. The Himachal win has done wonders for the party morale. The BJP may point out that the entire state of Himachal has less voters than the city of Ahmedabad, the AAP may state that the MCD had more voters than the hill state—but as far as the Congress is concerned, in the end, a win is a win and the score chart of the recent round of Assembly polls reads 1:1:1.