April 28, 2026

The Congress Party: Going Further Down

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2022-03-10 10:07:43

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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack

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The trends of the election results in five states have one thing in common - that the Congress, the grand old party of India, is perilously close to extinction in many states and is fast losing its remaining supporters in others. It has become the Grand Oblivion Party as it is increasingly becoming unaware of what is happening around it and does not know how to stop the ground from slipping under its feet.

Take the trends for Uttar Pradesh. The party has never been a serious contender in the state for more than three decades (the last Congress government in the state was when Narayan Dutt Tiwari was chief minister in 1988-89). In 2017, it had won 7 seats with 6.25% vote share which was 5.4% lower than in 2012. This time, it is ahead in just two seats and its vote share has gone down by nearly 4%. Clearly, it faces the danger of being completely wiped out in India's biggest and politically most important state. Despite its many attempts in successive elections (this time, Priyanka Vadra had taken over and recognizing the power of women voters, launched a special Ladki Hun Lad Sakti Hun campaign to woo them), the Congress has not been able to win back the voters. It does not find support even in erstwhile family fiefdoms of Rae Bareilly and Amethi. 

In Punjab, the party could not fight back the anti-incumbency wave and the infighting in the party and Navjot Singh Sidhu's dramatics did it in. It is set to lose 59 seats and a huge percentage of vote share. All its stalwarts, including Sidhu and chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi (from both seats) are likely to lose. The party high command could not handle the state well and made the mistake of vilifying Arvind Kejriwal when it was clear that support was building up for AAP. Further, the free rein it gave to Sidhu damaged the party's prospects as the voters were left confused as to who was the real boss. It would be very difficult for the Congress to recover the lost ground in the state unless it brings in new faces as the old guard has been rejected by the voters.

In Uttaranchal, the party could not take advantage of the clearly visible anti-incumbency wave against the BJP government. In that sense, the BJP victory is as much a positive vote for the party as it is a negative vote against the Congress. In this state too, the faction-ridden Congress could not convince the voters to vote for it. The same story repeated in Goa where the people's disenchantment with the BJP government could not be used by the Congress to its advantage. The tall talk of not letting the BJP hijack the mandate like it did in 2017 came to naught as the party could not get the numbers. With leads in just 12 seats, the Congress cannot hope to form the government even with the help of local parties. In Manipur too, the party has been reduced to leads in just 9 seats and is down by 19 seats.

Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi talked of "revamp" and "rewiring" after it became clear that the party was getting routed everywhere. But isn't the party doing that since 2014? Since it is not getting the results even after several rounds of revamping and rewiring, isn't it time for the Gandhis to quit and let others with a contemporary political view run the party? For, it is clear that Rahul Gandhi's one point agenda of targeting Narendra Modi is not working. The Congress needs fresh blood and fresh ideas which the Gandhis are clearly not capable of providing. With its dismal performance in this round of elections, the Congress has also lost the voice to claim that it be given the pole position in an alliance of  Opposition parties.