It’s been a lucky break for the Congress. The party must be thankful that, but for a hopelessly divided opposition, it might not have made it to the winning post in two of the three states which went to the polls.
As much is clear in both Maharashtra and Haryana. In Arunachal Pradesh, of course, it faced no challenge. But the outcome in the distant northeastern state is not expected to have much of an impact on national politics.
The Congress’ performance in the two other states, however, is bound to cause some concern despite the formal victories. The reason is that the party cannot ignore the disconcerting fact that in the western Indian state, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), which helped it to win the parliamentary polls by splitting the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) vote, has rendered the same service again.
Even then, the Congress had to struggle to reach the halfway mark evidently because the anti-incumbency factor was working against it. Nor is this surprising considering that drought, price rise, farmers’ suicide, the terror attack in Mumbai last November, a lacklustre state leadership, the uneasy relations between the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) were among the issues affecting the ruling group’s chances.
What saved the Congress and the NCP was not only the role of the spoiler played by the MNS, but also the absence of credible leaders in both the Shiv Sena and the BJP. While the Sena supremo, Bal Thackeray, is no longer his old fiery self, the hole left in the BJP by Pramod Mahajan’s untimely death is yet to be fulfilled.
Neither Gopinath Munde nor Nitin Gadkari seems capable of arresting the slide in the BJP’s fortunes in the state. The uncertainty in the party about the fate of its central leaders like L.K. Advani and Rajnath Singh must have also undermined its prospects. To make matters worse, its ally, the Shiv Sena, has lost its sectarian plank to the MNS, whose leader Raj Thackeray has been described by NCP leader Sharad Pawar as more charismatic than the Sena’s working president Uddhav Thackeray.
For the Congress, the combination of these negative factors was a godsend. But its opportunistic dependence on the MNS means that it is living dangerously. The Congress, of course, is not unused to such cynical tactics. It bolstered Bal Thackeray in the 1960s to undermine the communist trade unions in Mumbai. But it cannot be unaware that such expediency does not enhance its prestige, especially among the middle classes.
Besides, its unspoken links with the MNS implies that the state government will have to go slow in the matter of booking offences against Raj Thackeray if and when he indulges in his customary anti-north Indian violence. That, too, will expose the Congress to criticism.
If the Maharashtra results have brought some of the unpalatable features of Congress politics to the fore, the Haryana outcome has exposed the fallacies of overconfidence. When Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda called for the elections a year ahead of schedule, he was sure of overwhelming success.
For one, the Congress had swept the parliamentary polls last May by winning nine of the 10 seats. For another, the opposition was in worse disarray, at least on the surface, than even in Maharashtra.
Both the BJP and the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) of Om Prakash Chautala were down in the dumps after their severe setbacks in the Lok Sabha elections, in which neither party could win a single seat.
When the BJP severed its links with the INLD, the Congress was even more sure of a sweeping success. But, as always, the electorate sprung a surprise. There was a curious resurgence of the INLD, which showed that even a politician as unprepossessing as Chautala could not be written off.
Although the Congress will be able to form a government in Haryana, the INLD’s success in grabbing one-third of the seats in the 90-member assembly means that Hooda will lose much of his earlier bluster.
The BJP must be regretting its decision to dump the INLD in favour of Bhajan Lal’s Haryana Janhit Congress. But the fact that it continues to play second fiddle to regional outfits in both Maharashtra and Haryana may not worry it as much as the realisation that the demoralisation it has been experiencing since the Lok Sabha defeat will remain with it for the time being.
The latest setbacks mean that its central leaders will be under greater pressure to evolve policies that have a wider appeal and sort out the problem of the line of succession in the post-Advani period.
For the Congress, it has been a reminder that no election delivers a final verdict. The satisfaction it felt after the parliamentary polls must have been dissipated to a considerable extent by the latest results, which have shown that it is winning by default. A more robust opposition can give it a run for its money.
