Had the organisational strength of the Congress in Uttarakhand been fit enough as is frequently claimed by party leaders, the recent instances of 'factionalism' and disagreements in the main Opposition involving senior leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party could have been capitalised upon to further bolster the Congress support base in the State.
However, political analysts point out that the Pradesh Congress Committee in Uttarakhand is itself enmeshed in various issues and struggling to tackle its own lot of crises like the factionalism simmering in the party organisation and the recent resurgence of disagreement between the PCC chief Kishore Upadhyay and Chief Minister Harish Rawat on certain issues.
Observers point out that at a time when the Congress should be working on consolidating its cadre in the State, recent occurrences taking place in the State's political arena have substantiated observations about both the national parties being afflicted by factionalism and political one-upmanship. With the leaders now having to focus increasingly on managing the internal state of affairs, the measures taken and planned by the Congress against its main rival BJP have failed to exert major impact on either the BJP's condition or the general opinion of the voters so far.
A senior party leader, wanting to remain anonymous, said that factionalism and internal strife is among the few long-standing phenomena which affect most political parties but are most often strongly rejected, contorted or perpetuated by getting a leader of the rival political camp to leave the BJP and join the Congress. Observers point out that while the PCC chief tackles issues on various fronts within the party, the increased frequency of 'poaching' members of rival parties is doing more to stir dissent within the party rather than strengthening the organisation as purportedly intended.
The exit of the turncoat former MlAs from the Congress has caused inconvenience to both the Congress and BJP. "Instead of focusing mainly on hitting the BJP hard on various issues arisen especially in recent days at the state and national levels, we are having to focus more on keeping out flock together in Uttarakhand lest further cracks weaken party leadership and scatter the cadre enough to affect the chances of the Congress in Vidhan Sabha elections to be held in 2017," said a party leader.
The recent political occurrences also involving former Chief Ministers and sitting MPs Bhuwan Chandra Khanduri and Bhagat Singh Koshyari apart from 'blunt' expression of their views by BJP leaders in the recent party congregation have only added to the challenges being faced by the BJP in Uttarakhand under the leadership of Ajay Bhatt, who is also the leader of Opposition in the Vidhan Sabha. Senior party leaders of the BJP have provided enough ammunition to the Opposition by eliciting focus on internal strife weakening the BJP but the Congress is busy trying to secure its own position in Uttarakhand, said another veteran party worker.