On Sunday, senior NCP leader Praful Patel told reporters that the outcome of the Bihar assembly elections suggested that division of votes will happen in future polls if the Congress continued to take other parties for granted. “The results of polls held in Bihar and other states indicated that the Congress should take other parties along and understand the ground reality,” he said. He said that the Sharad Pawar-led party was willing to forge an alliance with the Congress and other like-minded parties in upcoming Goa assembly elections. "But if such alliance doesn’t materialise, the NCP is ready to contest polls on its own and form a government [in Goa]," he added.
NCP is not the first party to make its discontent with the Congress clear. There are clear signs of open disgruntlement among the opposition parties in the country, raising questions of how it could impact their national unity.
In Bihar, a lacklustre show by the Congress had proven costly, as it dragged down the RJD too in the grand alliance. The Congress's tally dropped from 27 in 2015 to 19. Though the Congress improved its vote share from 6.66 per cent in 2015 to nearly 9.5 per cent in this election, its strike rate this time was less than 30 per cent as against 66 percent last time.
Sanjay Raut of the Shiv Sena, which is in alliance with the Congress in Maharashtra, had placed the blame of the Bihar poll defeat on the Congress. “Had the Congress performed better, Tejashwi would already have been declared chief minister,” he said. He called the Yadav scion as the “man of the match” of the elections, stating: “He has emerged as the face of Bihar’s future. While he had no support, BJP had the entire state machinery and the might of Prime Minister Narendra Modi behind it. Still, Tejashwi managed to challenge them.”
RJD’s veteran leader Shivanand Tiwari said the grand old party had "shackled" the grand alliance in the state. "Congress shackled the alliance with chains in the assembly elections. It contested 70 seats but did not hold even 70 rallies. Rahul Gandhi visited Bihar on three days and addressed two rallies a day. Priyanka Gandhi was not seen at all. When electioneering was at its peak, he was picnicking with Priyanka Gandhi in Shimla," Tiwari, who is considered close to RJD supremo Lalu Prasad, and is part of its old guard, said.
CPI(ML) Liberation general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya, whose party had won 12 out of the 19 assembly constituencies it contested in Bihar, said he hoped Congress would adopt a "more realistic" approach during its seat-sharing talks with the left front in West Bengal. Bhattacharya said he was sure that the grand old party, too, would be reviewing its poor show in Bihar and be reasonable while sealing a seat-sharing deal in politically sensitive Bengal, where the saffron brigade is making all efforts to clinch power. Citing the poll results in Bihar, where the Congress, as a partner of the grand alliance, fared poorly, Bhattacharya told PTI in an interview, "The party shouldn't be in the driver's seat in the CPI(M)-Congress alliance in West Bengal".
Congress’s election woes
Congress has been faring poorly in numerous state polls in recent years.
In Uttar Pradesh, where Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav came together in 2017 to fight the BJP, the Congress could win only seven seats, while the Samajwadi Party emerged victorious in 47 segments.
In Assam, where elections are due in March-April next year, the Congress, which had been ruling the state since 2001, lost power in 2016 when its strength slipped to 26 in the 126-member House.
Similarly, during Tripura polls, the Congress drew blank in 10 seats that it had won in 2013.
More recently, in Odisha, where assembly elections were held along with the parliamentary polls in 2019, the Naveen Patnaik-headed BJD returned to power, clinching 112 seats in the 147-member assembly, while the Congress lost its position as the main opposition to the BJP.
Internal criticism
A few days after Congress leader Kapil Sibal's public criticism of the party leadership and his statement that the time of introspection was over and people no longer saw the party as an effective alternative, another prominent Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad pointed out that the party has lost connection on the ground. He, however, sought to give a "clean chit to Gandhis" over the poll debacle saying they can't do much right now due to COVID-19
According to news agency ANI, when Azad was asked about the recent electoral setbacks the party faced, he said "We all are worried about losses, especially about Bihar and bypolls results. I don't blame the leadership for the loss. Our people have lost the connection on the ground. One should be in love with their party.
He apportioned the blame for defeats to "five-star culture" of party leaders and added that party won't be able to win the elections unless the leaders are willing to give up this culture. "Polls aren't worn by five-star culture. Problem with leaders today is if they get a party ticket, they first book a five-star hotel. They won't go if there's a rough road. Till the time five-star culture is given up, one can't win elections," he was quoted as saying.
Hitting back, senior leader Salman Khurshid on Sunday said there is no leadership crisis in the party and an all-round support for Sonia and Rahul Gandhi is "apparent to anyone who is not blind".
Khurshid, who is among the leaders considered close to the Gandhi family, also said there are enough forums in the Congress for airing views and doing so outside the party "hurts" it, remarks that come days after Sibal and some others went public with their criticism of the party leadership.
"The leadership listens to me, I am given an opportunity, they [those criticising in the media] are given an opportunity, where does this thing come from that the leadership is not listening," Khurshid told PTI in an interview.
Asked about comments by Sibal and another senior leader P. Chidambaram on Congress’s poor showing in the Bihar election and recent bypolls, he said he cannot disagree with what they have said, but asked why does anybody have to go out and tell the media and the world that "we need to do this".
"Analysis is done all the time, there is no quarrel about analysis. It will be done. The leadership, of which all these people are a part, will appropriately look at what may have gone wrong, how we could have improved, and that will happen in the normal course, we needn't talk about it in the public," said Khurshid, a permanent invitee to the Congress Working Committee (CWC).
-Inputs from agencies
