Political circles in Uttar Pradesh are reverberating with the question on what the future holds for Congress in this politically volatile state under the aegis of its new captain Rahul Gandhi. The party has been going through a very bad phase for the past three decades in the state. Whether, under Rahul’s leadership, the Congress will be revived or will it continue to struggle for its survival is the question being asked.
In the present scenario, the toughest challenge for Rahul will be to revive the party. Unfortunately, he does not seem to have much time for this because the 2019 general elections are not very far. As the national president, his first tough test will be winning the 2019 general election seats from UP.
In its heydays, the Congress, in the most populous state, used to be a tough challenge for the opposition. Even ideologically extreme opposites BJP and socialists were forced to come together to deal with invincibility of the Congress.
The very same Congress has only seven legislators in the 403-member UP assembly, currently. The party has only two MPs from the state, which sends 80 MPs to parliament. Even in the polls held after the Emergency, when the Congress was passing through the most critical phase of its political life, it won 47 seats.
In the recently held corporation polls in the state, the party fared quite badly and could not win any mayoral seat and in the Nagar Palika polls, out of the 198 seats it could win only nine. In village panchyats, out of 438 seats the party could win only 17.
Political analysts say that to do better in 2019 polls, Rahul has to make Congress stand on its own feet. The Congress cannot hope to revive its fortunes in UP by joining hands with other major political parties. Hopefully, the high command would learn some lessons from party’s defeat in 2017 assembly polls, when it joined hands with the then ruling Samajwadi Party.
Despite dissent from other Congress leaders in the state, the party decided to undertake this experiment.
Not only this, Rahul has to find strong leaders and consolidate the party cadre in the entire state. Its leaders have to come out from TV debates and reach the fields to enhance its credibility and acceptance among the voters. Though the state Congress leaders are quite happy with Rahul's ascension, only future will tell which way the wind blows.
