A resurgent Congress under Rahul has to clear all the dead wood | Faraz Ahmad

One clear message from Haryana for the resurgent Congress led by Rahul Gandhi is to clear all the dead wood and send the ageing satraps to retirement homes.

First it was Madhya Pradesh where the then Pradesh Congress committee (PCC) president Kamal Nath, even after becoming the chief minister in 2018 won’t relinquish the PCC post lest his political rival and much younger Jyotiraditya Scindia corners some footage. The Congress therefore lost MP even after emerging the single largest party with 114 seats just two short of a simple majority. Kamal Nath’s clear message to the party’s central leadership was, after me, my son Nakul Nath and so don’t allow Scindia to rise. Result: Scindia walked over to the BJP with a doddering Kamal Nath holding desperately on to his turf inside, the Congress party suffered its worst defeat both in the 2023 assembly polls and then in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections again.

Shows how helpless the central leadership of the Congress felt before the might of Kamal Nath that it succumbed to letting him lead the party to defeat after humiliating defeat.

Then came Rajasthan where Ashok Gehlot perceived the dynamic Sachin Pilot a threat to passing his mantle to his son. And therefore, spent all his energies to push Pilot out of the Congress into the BJP. But thanks to the intervention of the likes of Priyanka Gandhi, that situation was eventuality saved. Yet even though the BJP was hardly in good shape with Vasundhara Raje sulking, the Congress house appearing divided, lost it to the BJP.

In Himachal Pradesh the party finally stood its ground and refused to crown former chief minister’s wife Pratibha Singh or son Vikramaditya Singh and instead chose a ground level worker Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu as the chief minister. But ever since, the mother-son duo are playing footsie with the BJP which is fomenting communal trouble in a largely peaceful state sometime targeting a mosque or an outsider (read Muslim). First the mother-son duo made six Congress MLAs cross over to vote for a BJP candidate in the Rajya Sabha polls. When that failed to bring down the Sukhu government they are now taking a leaf from the rabidly communal Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath by ordering all the small and big vendors to display their names on their carts and dhabas. It is only a matter of time when they will bring down the Sukhu government unless the party decides to show them the door. After all they failed to retain even their pocket borough the Mandi Lok Sabha seat and lose it to an upstart film actor Kangana Ranaut.

But the most embarrassing defeat in recent times the Congress faced was in Haryana. The farmers’ agitation, harassment and humiliation of wrestlers had the self-respecting Haryanavis up in arms against the BJP. Small mercy that Olympic winner Vinesh Phogat wreaked her vengeance on the BJP by winning her seat. The anger over the BJP government’s Agniveer scheme, depriving the Haryana youth to become a full-fledged soldier and widespread corruption in the state, anti-incumbency against the BJP staired in the face of any observer. Their CM Nayab Singh Saini was being booed and forced back from villages. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s few rallies were hardly anything to talk about. Contrast this with the kind of turnout Rahul Gandhi’s road shows and rallies were witnessing. Was it a wild dream to expect a Congress sweep in Haryana. But the reverse happened. The BJP won 8 more seats than it did in 2019 and unlike in 2019 when it needed the support of Dushyant Chautala’s fledgling Jananayak Janata Party (JJP) to get its numbers to form a government, this time it has three more MLAs than the half way mark of 45 to form the government on its own. There is no doubt some substance in the Congress charge of complicity of the Election Commission in manipulating the electronic voting machine (evm). After all the analysts of the results of the Lok Sabha elections have proved beyond doubt the complicity of a partisan Election Commission by showing that but for just three Lok Sabha seats, the votes turned out of the evm did not tally with the votes cast. With an election commission determined to ensure Modi’s victory at all costs, and the courts turning a deaf ear to the pleadings, it cannot be ruled out if in such a huge anti-incumbency against the BJP, the evm might have played the trick in selected constituencies. At the very least the figures should have been reverse with the BJP coming down from 40 to a maximum of 37 and the Congress getting a minimum of 48, if not more.

As for the Election Commission and its manipulation, it doesn’t surprise those who have been closely observing its partisan acts. But then the Congress is no less to blame for not being prepared for a possible manipulation by the EC/BJP. It was after all a do or die battle for Modi as much as it was for the Congress not to allow the BJP win a third term. if the BJP had lost Haryana, the voices of Modi baiters in the BJP would have been heard more loudly. That was all the more reason for the Congress party to fight unitedly.

But Bhupinder Singh Hooda would have none of it. He cornered 72 out of 89 tickets for his followers. He walked out of the meeting when Rahul Gandhi and Congress president Mailkarjun Kharge tried to accommodate Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP party on a few seats. Kiran Chaudhry who had a longer political career in Congress, both in Delhi first and then in her home state Haryana was forced to go over to the BJP. Her daughter Shruti Chaudhry won narrowly from her home turf Tosham on a BJP ticket. Hooda allowed no say in the choice of candidates to senior leaders like Kumari Selja and Randeep Singh Surjewala. Selja’s sulk and withdrawing from the campaign hugely affected the Congress fortunes among Dalit voters who constitute more than 20 per cent in Haryana. The BJP capitalised on this discord, repeatedly beckoning Selja to join the BJP. At the end Rahul, attempted a last-minute cosmetic rapprochement between Selja and Hooda. By then it was too late and the message had gone down that Hooda won’t allow anyone to challenge his supremacy in Haryana Congress. Selja did not leave the party and announced she would never leave the party but her disenchantment with the overbearing Hooda adversely affected the Dalit voters in no uncertain terms.

Political analyst Ashutosh Varshney in his latest piece in the Indian Express, described the BJP victory in Haryana a “qualified victory. If the Congress had played its alliance-making, its constituency management and its candidate selection better and acquired another 2 per cent vote, one can easily show that depending on the distribution, the results could have been very different.” But that’s precisely where Hooda should be held squarely responsible.

There is an oft repeated adage “United we stand, divided we fall” which is coming true for the Congress party one after another defeat in the states where the Congress is in direct fight with the BJP. Except for Himachal Pradesh, the Congress has lost MP, Rajasthan, Chhatisgarh, and now Haryana. Had Hooda taken along Selja, Randeep Singh Surjewala and even Kiran Chaudhry earlier, the Congress would not have cut such a sorry figure.

There was a time when the writ of the central leadership ran. Since 2019 specially, with the Congress being reduced to a minor player at the Centre, it depended too heavily on regional satraps. To replace them with a new, young and dynamic leadership, in consonance with Rahul Gandhi’s efforts to take everyone along to fight the BJP and oust Narendra Modi, became a tall order. But by now it is amply clear that if the party’s mass mobiliser is Rahul Gandhi, then it is high time he gets rid of all the dead wood dragging the party down.

By contrast, Congress in alliance with its INDIA bloc partners has performed reasonably well in states where it has acknowledged the pre-eminence of its regional leaders. In Jharkhand that’s no issue with Hemant Soren firmly in the saddle. But in Mahrashtra, discretion demands that the INDIA bloc announces Udhav Thackeray their chief ministerial candidate even while seeking proportionate tickets for the Congress and NCP. Otherwise again there would be a divided house and the BJP will walk away with a big victory. And once that happens, mind you there will be no looking back for Modi and no future for democracy.