Opinion | Congress's Old Problem Is Back: Over-Confidence Without Numbers

Rahul Gandhi's recent assertion at a rally in Gurugram, that the Congress alone can defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is puzzling. Not only does it betray a blissful misreading of the outcome of the recent round of five assembly elections, but it also suggests that Rahul hasn't quite grasped the gravity of the upcoming political and electoral challenges the Congress must overcome before he can position his party as the sole viable opposition force. 

The eight-day delay in choosing V D Satheesan as the new Kerala chief minister illustrates the sloth that pervades the party's political responses.

Even so, it would be churlish to begrudge Rahul Gandhi and the Congress their moment of joy. They have ended a nearly two-year-long drought of assembly victories by reclaiming Kerala from the Left with a handsome margin. Rahul Gandhi also made an adroit manoeuvre in Tamil Nadu, which is likely to see the Congress back in government in the state after 59 years. He signed on to a long-term partnership with actor Vijay and his TVK, hoping to ride on the back of their stunning electoral performance to regain relevance in a state once dominated by the Congress till the Dravidian parties swept it into a political wilderness in 1967.

Taking Chances

The decision to dump DMK, a loyal ally for 23 years, will have its own repercussions within the Opposition INDIA bloc. But Rahul Gandhi, buoyed perhaps by his Kerala victory, seems to have decided to take his chances and go with the flow.

However, these gains must be juxtaposed with the verdicts from Assam and West Bengal. In Assam, the BJP posted a third consecutive victory and its best-ever performance to win a three-fourths majority with its alliance partners. The Congress managed just 21 seats and had to swallow the humiliating defeat of its state president and chief ministerial face, Gaurav Gogoi.

But it is the BJP's phenomenal storming of the West Bengal citadel that should set alarm bells ringing in the Congress and send it scurrying to the drawing board to chalk out future strategies. Apart from strategic deletions in the ruling Trinamool Congress party's strongholds through a contentious Special Intensive Review of electoral rolls by the Election Commission and the overwhelming presence of nearly half the country's paramilitary forces for the duration of the election, the BJP successfully trumped Bengal's famed cultural and regional sub-nationalism with an emotive paradigm that few thought would overwhelm the state: Hindu consolidation.

Lessons From West Bengal And Assam

The party's surge in vote share, from 38% in 2021 to 46% in 2026, indicates that almost 70% of Hindus voted for it, polarised by the BJP's successful propaganda against "infiltrators'' (read Bangladeshi Muslims) and disenchantment with what they perceived as Mamata Banerjee's poor governance record marred by a pro-Muslim tilt.

There are many lessons from West Bengal and Assam for the Congress to read, especially since the majority of state elections coming up in the next two years will see the party pitted in a direct fight with the BJP. No two states are the samem but as the West Bengal verdict underlines, there is a gradual but visible flattening of the social and cultural landscape, influenced by a host of factors, including market forces, social media and the runaway success of dark Bollywood films such as Dhurandhar.

The AAP Risk In Punjab

Immediate challenges for the Congress are in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, where elections are due in the first half of 2027. Although the BJP has been a minor player in Punjab, the recent defection of seven Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Rajya Sabha MPs suggests that it has big plans to enlarge its footprint in this border state. Six of the AAP MPs were elected from Punjab, and two of them, Raghav Chaddha and Sandeep Pathak, helped script their former party's victory in the 2022 assembly polls.

As AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal scrambles to hold his tottering party together, there appears to be a sense of complacency in the Congress that it is the default option in Punjab. These are dangerous assumptions to make when one is up against the BJP's single-minded pursuit of one-party dominance.

Mocking Ravneet Singh Bittu, a prominent Sikh leader and grandson of late Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh - who the Congress lost to the BJP on the eve of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls - on the steps of Parliament as Rahul Gandhi did in the last session, is certainly not going to win the Congress brownie points in the state.

The Congress will have to think strategically if it hopes to win back Punjab, even if it means keeping the door open for a post-poll understanding with AAP in case of a hung assembly, much like it made the switch from DMK to TVK in Tamil Nadu.

Akhilesh In UP

But it is Uttar Pradesh that poses the biggest challenge. While the main challenger to the BJP in the state is Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party, he cannot fight the Modi-Yogi juggernaut alone. Those who know Uttar Pradesh well feel that a broad alliance between the Samajwadi Party (SP), Dalit leader Chandrashekhar Azad's Aazad Samaj Party and the Congress has the best chance of putting up a fight, even if it fails to win.

Rahul Gandhi's recent boast in Gurugram does not augur well for opposition alliance politics in Uttar Pradesh unless the Congress is willing to slip back into its 2024 humble mode.

Other hotspots for the Congress are Karnataka and Telangana, which will go to polls in 2028. In both states, the party will be defending its governments and, therefore, fighting an anti-incumbency sentiment.

The Hindu consolidation the BJP achieved in West Bengal shows that the politics of polarisation has not peaked as yet, especially in states with significant minority populations, as both Karnataka and Telangana are.

The Congress must get off the mountain peak of entitlement as the Grand Old Party of Indian politics and smell the coffee. There is no such thing as a default option anymore, not when it's up against a formidable election machine that works 24x7.

(The author is a senior journalist)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author