Rahul Gandhi: Congress triumphed in 99 seats in the Lok Sabha election of 2024. Recent elections to the Haryana and Jammu & Kashmir Assemblies reveal that hopes that Congress had finally found its footing had failed to gain ground. Intra-party factionalism was cited as a primary reason for failure in Haryana, and against an aggressive BJP campaign, the Congress campaign fell woefully short in Jammu and Kashmir. No senior leader seemed particularly proactive in the battlefields of Jammu, Samba, Kathua, and Udhampur-the BJP’s bastions by considerable margins. Questions arise: is Rahul Gandhi‘s Congress losing steam again?
BJP Secures Historic Win in Haryana
The Bharatiya Janata Party emerged as a clear winner in the Haryana assembly elections with a massive victory, consecutively bagging third successive terms with a convincingly winning forty-eight seats, whereas Congress won the second position with 37 seats, very importantly telling that the party still has a lot to do. Contrary to the exit polls of news channels, the BJP is going to create history in Haryana by forming the government for the third time. The BJP’s well-organized structure and efficient and effective campaigning led to an impressive success and historical achievement for the party in Haryana.
The main reason that led to the poor show of Congress was that it was highly divided from within and had no united strategy for its polls. The factionalism that emerged inside the party lessened its ability to strong campaigning. It was said that former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Kumari Selja were on opposite sides, but these never leaked in the visible form among the voters and weakened the front against the consolidated campaign of the BJP. BJP, led by Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini, exploited the internal disarray to celebrate a victory.
NC-Congress Alliance Wins in Jammu and Kashmir
This was the first assembly election since ten years of its absence and the first since Article 370 was abrogated in August 2019. Even in Jammu and Kashmir, Rahul Gandhi’s party has won only 6 seats. On the other hand, NC has performed brilliantly and is going to form the government by winning a total of 42 seats. Omar Abdullah, NC vice president and former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir said he was thankful to the people for all their support. He underlined that voters in Jammu and Kashmir had behaved judiciously, and the BJP was totally erased from the region’s political chart.
The Jammu and Kashmir elections are a politico-managerial moment of great significance because the Union Territory has been under central rule since the BJP withdrew from its coalition government with the PDP in 2018. That NC-Congress victory opens the door for Jammu and Kashmir to have its first elected government after six years, and it means a return to democratic governance after a long period of center rule.
It lost in Jammu and Kashmir despite doing some aggressive campaigning. It is a rather sharp contrast to what is happening in Haryana, where the party seems not to be giving an inch. The National Conference, backed by Congress, used public feeling against BJP’s policies in the region, specifically abrogating Article 370, a move that perhaps made it much easier for them to win the elections with a landslide.
Has Rahul Gandhi’s Congress Lost Momentum?
Despite this, Rahul Gandhi’s party failed to put across a fighting performance in the two states – Haryana as well as Jammu & Kashmir. Here again, the party lost at the hands of internal conflict in the state of Haryana and a general inability to put up a fight against the BJP in the key districts of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Assembly elections are to be held in two states at the end of this year, which include Maharashtra and Jharkhand. Apart from this, Delhi Assembly elections are to be held in early 2025. But now the biggest question is whether the path of Congress is going to be difficult after the defeat in Haryana. We are doing this because in Maharashtra, Congress can contest elections with All India Alliance including Shiv Sena.
In Jharkhand, there is also a JMM party that is a member of the India Alliance. There are now rumors circulating that the Congress party would experience challenges with seat sharing. Aside from this, several India Alliance politicians, including as Arvind Kejriwal, have questioned a lot about the Congress. To put it plainly, Congress may now find it harder to exert pressure on the India Alliance on seat sharing.
Silver linings in all these developments, at least so far as Congress is concerned, can well be seen in the re-alliance of the party in Jammu and Kashmir. In any case, continued losses for the party raise very serious questions about its long-term momentum. Given Rahul Gandhi ‘s limited profile in critical regions and factionalism in key states, it would seem that, even after a year of practically unanimous opinion on leadership and strategy, the party has hardly shaken off the leadership and strategic challenges it has had to overcome for several years. Now it will be interesting to see what the next step of opposition leader Rahul Gandhi will be.
So, in a nutshell, though Congress is still one of the major political forces, the recent defeat in both Haryana and Jammu & Kashmir Assembly elections shows that it has still a long way to go. Rahul Gandhi ‘s strategies were to some extent impressive and successful, but now, the gains achieved by Congress in Lok Sabha in 2024 at large are all under question.