If winning Haryana was important for the BJP then Maharashtra holds the same existential significance for the INDIA bloc and particularly the Congress party. If you recall the BJP came out of the Lok Sabha polls with a significant decrease in its numbers giving hope to the Opposition that it had a chance in the next round of assembly polls. That hope came to naught when the BJP swept the assembly polls and also managed a good showing in Jammu. If anything it was the Congress that came out demoralised post haryana as it lost a state it could have so easily won. No wonder then, those who saw the Prime Minister’s victory speech at the BJP HQ on the evening of the Haryana results were heard remarking that the PM had got his mojo back. And how !
Now it is the Congress party’s turn to face the electoral test. Not unlike Haryana, Maharashtra is a state where a BJP alliance is in power. However, this is again a state where the Congress and its allies did well in the Lok Sabha and where it fancies a chance of a comeback. This again is exactly what had happened in Haryana as well where the Congress fared well in the Lok Sabha but could not translate its gains in the assembly polls. Can the Congress and its MVA alliance partners challenge the BJP’s lead Mahayuti alliance and win the state for the INDIA bloc.
For this the Congress will have to take some hard decisions. The first is to give the lead to its allies which have a CM face in the form of Uddhav Thackeray. Before the Haryana results the Congress was keen to go in without a CM face and leave the decision on the strength of the winning MLAs. But after the allies have seen the Congress performance in the last round of assembly polls, the general feeling is that the Congress still doesnt have what it takes, to stop the BJP. But the allies have a better success rate as Omar Abdullah proved in the J&K polls recently. This is clearly a calculation that Uddhav Thackeray and his team have made for they are pushing for their leader to be declared the CM candidate before the polls. Ditto for Akhilesh Yadav who went ahead and announced candidates for 6 of the 10 bypolls in Uttar Pradesh without waiting for the Congress to negotiate the seats it wanted.
This brings us back to the Congress and to Rahul Gandhi. It is not as if the Congress did not wage a good campaign in Haryana. In hindsight one can question the unipolar focus on the Jaat vote etc but it was not as if the Congress was ignoring the OBC and SC/ST vote bank. Rahul himself lead the demand for a caste census while the Congress also focused on the farmers, the soldiers and the youth. They talked about the agniveer, the farm bills and the unproductive economy, and this did hit a chord on the ground as one saw from the rallies. Again, was the Congress wrong in promoting Bhupinder Singh Hooda as its tallest leader and the most probable CM face ? He was the party’s tallest leader and a former CM. While Kumari Selja did hit a chord with the Dalits at being sidelined, Hooda’s on ground popularity should have been enough to counter this. But it did not and the BJP’s narrative of Jaats Vs the Rest won the state.
But by and large the Congress campaign covered all the crucial issues of the day, both at the state level and the national level. What it lacked however was a credible face to sell this narrative. The fault is as much Hooda’s as it is with the Central leadership and here the buck stops with Rahul Gandhi. Despite his on ground connect and increasing popularity he still hasn’t been able to convince the voter that he is the best alternative to Narendra Modi. And if the MVA alliance loses Maharashtra, then rightly or wrongly, the allies will blame the Congress. That is the immediate dilemma before Rahul Gandhi – how involved should he get in the Maharashtra campaign? What are the issues the Congress needs to raise – will attacking Adani-Ambani work in the state that houses the financial capital of the country? And should he let the allies take the lead and announce Uddhav Thackeray as the CM face?