For Rahul Gandhi, A Happy First Anniversary

NEW DELHI: Exactly a year, to the day, that Rahul Gandhi was named Congress president, his party colleagues gave him the best gift he could have hoped for, tapping into anti-incumbency and widespread rural distress to defeat BJP in three states. The outcome boosts Rahul's stature as PM Narendra Modi’s main rival for the top office and may help set up a closer-than-anticipated duel for next year’s Lok Sabha polls.

Congress delivered a knockout in Chhattisgarh, won on points in Rajasthan, and looked set to eke out a narrow victory in a cliffhanger in Madhya Pradesh. Kamal Nath, Congress chief in MP, wrote to the governor late Tuesday night, stating that his party had emerged as the single largest and had been assured the backing of all Independent MLAs, giving it a majority. He sought an appointment to stake the Congress’ claim to form government in the state.

The victories, the first by Congress against BJP in the Hindi heartland after Modi’s ascendancy, more than salved the humiliation it suffered in Telangana and Mizoram.



In Telangana, the ruling TRS rode on the goodwill that party boss and CM K Chandrasekhar Rao enjoys as the creator of the state to score a landslide. With Mizo National Front snatching Mizoram, the only north-eastern state still with Congress, the party has lost the entire swath where it enjoyed dominance for decades.

The biggest surprises were, perhaps, the scale of victories of Congress and TRS in Chhattisgarh and Telangana, respectively. BJP, despite the burden of incumbency, came close to pulling off a “come-from-behind” upset in Madhya Pradesh. It refused to roll over even in Rajasthan, putting up an stiff fight and returning a tally that bucked popular estimates about the unpopularity of CM Vasundhara Raje.

Yet, the results point to Congress’s recovery from a long spell of marginalisation in the politically crucial belt and, equally important, can transform Rahul from a spunky underdog into Modi’s principal combatant.

Congress’s success on Tuesday invests Rahul Gandhi’s campaign themes with a credibility and lethality they so far seemed to lack and makes BJP’s job for 2019 that much more difficult. To that extent, the 2019 polls may turn out to be a quasi-presidential duel between him and Modi.

Next summer’s contest still remains a battle for Modi and BJP to lose. The findings of exit polls, which called the elections right, also attested to the PM continuing to be the most popular politician.

By all accounts, the 15-year incumbency of BJP governments in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh were critical to Congress’s performance in the two states. Both the outgoing chief ministers — Raman Singh and Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the latter in particular — enjoyed goodwill for being capable administrators. But their three stints also rendered them vulnerable to discontent — an inevitability in the “era of escalating aspirations”.

Few expected Raje to defy the state’s revolving-door pattern of politics after she scored a string of self-goals and failed to counter the perception of ‘arrogant aloofness’ that swirled around her.

But their defeats also spell the failure of “rescue acts” that the PM and BJP chief Amit Shah mounted. In fact, Congress sought to turn the elections into a referendum on Modi’s measures like demonetisation and GST and allegations of corruption in the Rafale deal.

The success can encourage Congress to conflate the local with the national and sharpen its attack on Modi, focusing on his personal integrity and enhancing the prospect of strong, perhaps even dramatic, counter-measures from the incumbent who is not known for underestimating his opponents. There were already indications of growing receptivity to RSS’s pitch for a legislation to facilitate construction of Ram mandir and the setback may serve to enhance the temptation. The possibility of welfare measures topping finance minister Arun Jaitley’s ‘interim’ budget has grown by a small measure though Modi, who resisted Raman Singh’s ‘SOS’ messages for clearance to allow a loan waiver to match a similar sop by Congress, is unlikely to go to the length KCR traversed to drub Congress and TDP.

Rao’s victory shows the resilience of regional players, underlines the limits of national parties and will make it necessary for both Congress and BJP to woo them. Rahul, while savouring success, didn’t forget to stretch out a hand of friendship to potential allies who have always found themselves uncomfortable with a powerful Congress. Expect BJP also to take a softer stance from here on.