Why blaming others for its decimation in Gujarat is a weak argument by Congress?

New Delhi: A flurry of statements by Congress leaders blaming the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) for their party’s decimation in Gujarat seeks to cover up their organisational weaknesses and a lacklustre campaign.

Congress leaders such as P Chidambaram, Digvijaya Singh and Jairam Ramesh hold the AAP and the AIMIM responsible for a remarkable victory of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the just-concluded assembly elections in the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his close lieutenant and union home minister Amit Shah.

According to Chidambaram, the AAP played a spoiler’s role as it did in Goa and Uttarakhand, claiming that Arvind Kejriwal’s party dented the prospects of the Congress in 33 seats.

Both Singh and Ramesh claimed that the Congress was pitted against an alliance of the BJP, AAP and AIMIM. He said the AAP and the AIMIM cut into the Congress votes that eventually helped the BJP win a record 157 seats with a whopping vote share of 52.50%.

The Congress ended up winning 17 seats, 60 down from the 77 it won in the 2017 elections. Its vote share also fell from around 40% to 27.28%.

While the AAP won five seats with a vote share of around 13%, the AIMIM failed to open its account and bagged just a 0.29% vote share.

Congress leaders are right in claiming that the AAP hurt its chances on many seats, especially in Saurashtra and the tribal belt.

But then it is the democratic right of every political party to contest elections and try to win as many seats as it could. The AAP has national ambitions and is keen on expanding its footprint across the country. So has AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi.

The Congress, which is India’s oldest political party, and the ruling BJP boasts of a powerful and effective election machinery must deal with it.

By that logic, the Congress should not contest elections in states where the other opposition parties are fighting the BJP such as Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Delhi or even Bihar where it proved to be the weakest link in the grand alliance, as a result of which the Janata Dal (United)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won the elections in 2020.

A comparison between the Congress party’s 2017 and 2022 campaign in Gujarat also explains its poor show this time.

In 2017, Rahul Gandhi led from the front, criss-crossing Gujarat for over two months. Gandhi campaigned for 22 days during which he addressed around 150 rallies and corner meetings, covering 2,600km by road and visiting 26 temples. On an average, Gandhi addressed three rallies and five corner meetings a day.

This time, he addressed just two rallies - one at Mahuva in Surat district and another in Rajkot – on November 22, the day he took a break from his ongoing nationwide Bharat Jodo Yatra.

His 3,570-km yatra, which started from Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu on September 7, is expected to culminate at Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir on January 26.

While Rahul Gandhi was busy with his yatra, his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra skipped campaigning in Gujarat to keep her focus on Himachal Pradesh. She campaigned aggressively and led her party to victory in the hill state, where Rahul Gandhi did not campaign at all.

Thus, the election management in Gujarat was left to Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot who was the general secretary in-charge of the state in 2017. One of his close associates, Raghu Sharma, was the in-charge of the western state this time.

Perhaps a weak party organisation and an uninspiring campaign explain why the Congress that had won 77 seats and almost came to the brink of ousting the BJP in 2017 came down to just 17 this time.