As polls to the state legislatures of West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Kerala draw closer, the electoral strategy of the Congress ought to send shivers down spines of party loyalists.
These are states where till a decade ago the BJP was a marginal force and the Congress was either in power or the main Opposition. The BJP has grown its footprint in these states in varying degrees, the regional forces are still around and fighting hard. But the Congress has not only been, to use the Simon & Garfunkel lyric, slip slidin’ away but has compounded its decline with an approach to the 2021 Assembly elections that has confused even its own cadre.
The immediate trigger for the paltry seat allocation to it by ‘senior partners’ in some states seems to be the Congress’ poor performance in last year’s Bihar Assembly poll, where it performed well below par in the 74 seats it contested, and the party’s failure to retain MLAs in Madhya Pradesh where the Kamal Nath government fell barely 15 months into its five-year term. And it hasn’t been that long since the party failed to keep its flock together in Karnataka.
A wary DMK, therefore, has conceded a total of 25 seats to the once Grand Old Party of Indian politics in Tamil Nadu. In West Bengal, the smart money is on the Congress putting in a repeat of its Bihar performance ~ while the party is contesting from a significant 92 seats which the Left Front has allowed it to do in the name of secular unity much like the RJD had done in Bihar.
Additionally, the Congress has had to swallow political insults from the fringe Indian Secular Front-AIMIM combine, which too is part of the ‘third front’ in Bengal, demoralising an already despondent rank and file.
In Kerala, opinion polls and political observers are predicting the Left-led LDF coalition will retain power – the first time since 1980 a ruling coalition would win successive terms in office ~ as the Congress- led UDF coalition has been unable to get its house in order and even its urban support base is being chipped away by the BJP.
Puducherry, where the Congress still leads a coalition as opposed to being a minor player in one, is a harbinger of depressing news for the party as a bunch of its legislators recently quit leading to the collapse of its government and leaving it staring at an unsure future.
In its erstwhile fiefdom of Assam, the Congress has been reduced to aligning with a number of smaller parties including some ideologically vicious ones to try and prevent the BJP’s return to power.
But such is the predicament it finds itself in as even minor players are unwilling to accept the Congress’ prime position in the mahajot that it is yet to announce the number of seats it will contest. Hanging on to others’ coattails seems to be only discernible Congress strategy.