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Home Opinion What Congress’s self-goal in Haryana means for INDIA bloc – and the message from BJP’s Kashmir failure

What Congress’s self-goal in Haryana means for INDIA bloc – and the message from BJP’s Kashmir failure

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I watched with amusement and an indescribable schadenfreude the palpable discomfiture of the BJP spokesperson as he tried to valiantly rationalise the predicted debacle of his party in the Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir assembly election results. Doing it is not easy. I should know. I have been there a thousand times before. But this was till about 9.30 am on October 8, 2024. Shortly afterwards, the unthinkable happened in Haryana. In a remarkable reversal of counting trends, the BJP suddenly accelerated ahead of its archrival Congress. The celebrated Indian voter, once again embarrassed all exit poll psephologists, and gave a knock out punch to the grand old party in Haryana. Jammu and Kashmir voted the National Conference-Congress in, after a 10-year electoral hiatus. Instead of a double whammy for the BJP, it ended up even steven. But the Congress successfully completed its kamikaze mission.

The October 8 election verdict could have provided the reinvigorated opposition, led by an unusually resolute Congress, the second booster shot after a determined fightback in the Lok Sabha elections. But it turned out to be a mirage. Will the BJP see a potential crack, a cleavage that could lead to its potential resurrection after a dreary run? That is the billion-dollar question. We have now entered into a most fascinating phase of Indian politics after a 10-year stranglehold by a seemingly invincible Narendra Modi. The voter is becoming increasingly unpredictable.

A few broad-strokes will best explain (the granular analysis of the numbers will be in several pie-charts in every news medium anyway) how India, always a tricky conundrum, has surprised itself.

Modi’s trump cards fail

For one, PM Modi must be hopelessly nonplussed; his two big trump cards, the Ram temple construction and the abrogation of Art 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, which were permanent fixtures in the BJP manifesto for decades, have made negligible impact on the party’s political fortunes. BJP lost the Faizabad seat (Ayodhya is located in this constituency), which has 78 per cent Hindu population, and was humbled across Uttar Pradesh by the INDIA bloc. Religious polarisation, its political business model, had failed to deliver. The J&K results are further evidence of its over-reliance on the majoritarian programme.

If post-2019, there had indeed been a sincere, inclusive outreach towards social assimilation of disparate groups, why did the BJP field only 19 candidates from 47 constituencies in the Kashmir Valley? Why did it not win a single seat? Why was its vote-share a laughable single-digit figure? But perhaps the most unmistakable rejection of its Kashmir politics is the striking underperformance in Jammu, which it had clearly considered its rich cache, a guaranteed sure-shot sweep. Despite the gerrymandering that led to an increase of 43 seats in Jammu, the BJP got only 28 seats. In 2014, it had won 25. If the Congress had shown an avaricious appetite, the BJP would have faced a wipeout in Jammu too.

Festive offer

The disillusionment with the politically motivated and hastily rescinded Article 370 and the loss of statehood that followed had hurt sentiments cutting across religious lines, besides the absence of an economic windfall which was assured. There could not be a more stunning rebuke from the people of J&K to the BJP’s gameplan to appropriate for itself a majoritarian-nationalist party stature. Whatever happened to the Insaaniyat, Jamhooriyat and Kashmiriyat trope of former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee which was cursorily abandoned? The hard truth is that Kashmir became a political laboratory to position India’s largest minority population as fifth columnists across India. The J&K result means that the stratagem backfired. Former Governor and subsequent rebel Satya Pal Malik is probably having the last laugh.

Why Congress lost momentum

Secondly, in politics, momentum is a critical play. Post-June 4, 2024, Rahul Gandhi is the agenda-setter, and he is doing that with cool aplomb. The opposition looked galvanised. The tailwinds were helping; Arvind Kejriwal’s release from prison added to the opposition arsenal. The NC-INC alliance in J&K, the professed solidarity between the squabbling Congress bigwigs in Haryana, and the relatively tactful understanding emerging in the MVA alliance in Maharashtra, appeared to hold a lot of promise. But Congress committed hara-kiri; a déjà vu reminiscent of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh of about a year ago. Political arrogance is its bugbear, and in losing Haryana (like it did Punjab to AAP earlier), the Congress sent out a woeful message that its political comeback was still an incomplete project.

The near collapse of JJP and PDP, both opportunistic allies of the BJP, in these elections shows that a dalliance with the saffron party is akin to a kiss of death. There is a lesson there for the Congress: For the biggest election of the season coming up in Maharashtra in November, 2024, it will help if the party backs Uddhav Thackeray as the chief ministerial candidate. Petty egos, local leaders getting greedy, or a myopic understanding of the ramification of that election, could be disastrous for the INDIA bloc. They have a chance, but like Haryana, they could offer it magnanimously to the BJP on a silver platter.

BJP’s hunger wins Haryana

Thirdly, the gorilla in the room is the diminishing political brand of Modi, Haryana notwithstanding. After falling woefully short of the pompous 400 number in the Lok Sabha, Modi looks a woebegone shadow of his earlier fire and brimstone avatar. The NDA 3.0 under greater public scrutiny looks frangible; its economic record is iffy, its governance shambolic, despite the braggadocio. The crowds have thinned and got bored by the execrable verbiage. But Modi and the BJP are tough losers; and as Haryana shows, the BJP’s hunger for power is its USP. The Congress is happy to trend on Twitter.

But for the moment, the gutsy wrestler Vinesh Phogat is symbolic of the power of the public voice. Hurt and humiliated, shamed and targeted, she hung in. Her electoral success is Olympian.

The writer is a former Congress spokesperson

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