The faint hope of the Congress clawing back the lost support base in the Hindi heartland has drawn some strength from a presumption that the new chief ministers chosen by Prime Minister Narendra Modi may harm the BJP’s prospects at least in the immediate future.
Many Congress leaders believe restructuring of the leadership yields positive results in the long run but the transition is never smooth to begin with and the BJP will have to deal with tremors in the run-up to the parliamentary elections which are not far away. The dominant view in the party is that the BJP has opened windows of opportunity for the Congress by taking avoidable risks at this juncture.
The selection of chief ministers was doubtless received with a sense of relief by the Congress leadership. “Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Vasundhara Raje Scindia are visibly unhappy. Chouhan went so far as to publicly declare that he would prefer death to pleading before Delhi leaders for something for himself. That betrays a deep sense of anguish. Will he write his own political obituary by helping (new Madhya Pradesh chief minister) Mohan Yadav win the maximum number of seats in 2024?” a senior Congress leader said during an informal conversation.
Another leader said: “What appears to have pained Chouhan and Vasundhara is the choice of their replacements. While Mohan Yadav doesn’t have the stature to be Chouhan’s successor, Rajasthan chief minister Bhajanlal Sharma is a greenhorn. We must not assess their dismay in terms of an open revolt. That’s not the BJP culture. Both Chouhan and Vasundhara are seasoned players and they know the next battlefield is barely months away. They will strike carefully and take their revenge.”
Asked if the Congress’s hopes rest on the damage presumed to have been caused by the anticipated disunity in the BJP, this leader said: “Not at all. These are only the motivating factors. The Congress will have to work very hard, not wasting an hour. We haven’t shown that kind of urgency. We anyway don’t have the ability for a sustained battle in the field. We should use the churning in the BJP only to rejuvenate our workers. In all these three states, Modi has created conditions for our revival. But it is up to us to grab the opportunities or let them go.”
Echoing a similar sentiment, a Congress general secretary said: “The BJP has reinvented Modi’s guarantees. Instead of vague assertions, they have given a concrete shape to his guarantees in these states. The state governments will have to deliver. There will be comparison with Karnataka and Telangana, where our governments are fulfilling promises. Now, Modi will have to ensure the Ladli Behna scheme continues, gas cylinder is made available for Rs 450 and paddy is purchased for Rs 3,100. The anti-incumbency in Madhya Pradesh will get stronger and the governments in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh will be judged against the Congress welfare schemes.”
The Congress faces an uphill task as reversing fortunes in these three states is not going to be easy. The Congress created a false impression that it polled more votes than
the BJP in this round of Assembly elections and the tide can easily be turned, but the vote-share supremacy was invented by disingenuously clubbing Telangana with these three states. In Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, the BJP polled 50.33 lakh votes more than the Congress.
What’s an indisputable trend is that the BJP tends to increase its vote percentage in parliamentary elections because the “Modi-versus-who” factor comes into play. The Congress is against projecting any face from the INDIA Opposition combine as they want the election to be fought on issues, not individuals. “Main nahin, hum (Not me, but we),” remarked a Congress strategist when asked about a leadership face, stressing collective leadership and vitality of issues.
Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh have 65 Lok Sabha seats, out of which the BJP has 61 and the Congress only three. The BJP seems to have reached saturation point and it can only come down from the pedestal. The Congress has nothing to lose but it must snatch a substantial number of seats from the BJP to push it below the majority mark.
On the basis of Assembly vote-share, the Congress can substantially increase its tally in these states. If it launches intense political action on the ground, disallowing the inexperienced BJP chief ministers to settle down, it can even halve their stock and restrict Modi below the halfway mark. But the Congress hasn’t shown any capability in the last several years of working harder than the BJP in elections.
