A Congress-mukt Bharat (Congress-free India) is what Mahatma Gandhi wished for, Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned within the Lok Sabha on February 7, 2019, suggesting that Gandhi had known as for disintegrating the organisation.
“Congress-mukt Bharat is just not my slogan…I’m fulfilling the want of Mahatma Gandhi,” Modi, whose Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP) has popularised the phrase throughout its election campaigns throughout the nation, mentioned.
Reduce to September 2021.
The 136-year-old Congress organisation faces the identical issues — possibly extra — that had been stalking it two years in the past.
A sequence of election losses has shattered the morale of the social gathering cadre. Confusion over management and the highway forward has choked decision-making. Infighting retains rearing its ugly head from Rajasthan to Punjab. To make issues worse, 23 heavyweight leaders calling for reforms within the social gathering have dissented in public.
A Congress-mukt Bharat doesn’t look distant — at the very least on India’s electoral map — with the social gathering’s political footprints diminishing steadily.
The Congress, by itself, is in energy in three states — Punjab, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. In three extra — Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Jharkhand — it’s the junior accomplice within the ruling alliance.
And it isn’t simply the BJP that poses a problem to the Congress’s relevance. The Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Aam Aadmi Social gathering (AAP), two key gamers within the opposition bloc, are trying set to develop on the expense of what’s generally known as the “grand outdated social gathering”.
What unfolds in Delhi earlier than the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and whether or not the opposition might sew up a rainbow alliance to unitedly tackle the BJP is a special story. However, for now, the reality is Mamata Banerjee’s TMC and Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP are hurting the Congress — at instances badly — of their pockets of affect.
It’s no secret that the TMC and the AAP — buoyed by their election successes towards the BJP in West Bengal and Delhi — wish to develop. Each events know this is able to give them bargaining chips and assist them flex muscle groups on the nationwide degree, particularly within the occasion of the formation of a rainbow coalition. This growth appears to be taking place at the price of the Congress.
Each the TMC and the AAP are wooing Congress leaders to change sides, whereas attempting to seize the opposition house ceded by Sonia Gandhi’s social gathering because of the desertion of widespread faces.
Aside from the three states the place the Congress is in energy by itself, there are a couple of extra, together with Uttarakhand and Goa, the place the social gathering continues to be in a direct contest with the BJP.
It might be fascinating to see how the AAP and the TMC strategise and the way onerous they push to turn into a political different in such states. Whereas they won’t be instantly able to win energy, and even turn into the second place holder, they are going to definitely eye a piece of Congress votes in these states.
