Choke or Choker is a term normally used in cricketing parlance to describe a team or a player who wilts under pressure, particularly in the last stages of a match. For example, if a team is chasing a total and is well on course to victory but collapses or is unable to bear the pressure in the dying stages, the word choker comes into play for them.
There is no term coined yet for a team strained under pressure from the word go or from the very beginning. Probably, such a situation has not arisen yet in the game of cricket. And it is implausible to perceive a team or a player entering the field under pressure and choking in the first over.
From cricketing to the world of politics, the word choker has relevance but with different connotations. What the cricketing world is still to discover, political parties in India have already found. And the credit for this discovery goes to Congress — the Grand Old Party (GOP).
At least three recent developments, two importantly pertaining to the Bihar Assembly elections, and the third related to the Rajya Sabha polls — the first since Jammu and Kashmir became a Union Territory — and the accompanying Assembly by-election, have portrayed the GOP in a very poor picture. Chokers even before pressure began building on them.
In the context of the Bihar elections, it is baffling why Congress was reluctant to declare Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader, Mr Tejashwi Yadav, as the Chief Ministerial candidate of the opposition ‘Mahagathbandhan’. The RJD is the biggest party in the alliance, contesting the largest number of seats, and he being the former Deputy Chief Minister. Conversely, Congress, standing on the margins, is staking claim to only 50-60 seats with no worthwhile local leader in sight to be hypothetically projected as the Chief Minister. They did so, but after losing the initial advantage and face.
What could have been a psychological gain over the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the matter of announcing the Chief Ministerial candidate turned out to be a huge disadvantage with the issue left lingering for weeks together. It gave the full-resourced NDA (read BJP) machinery time to needle the opposition alliance as a means to cap their own weaknesses, with the NDA partners pulling in different directions and reluctance to declare Chief Minister Mr Nitish Kumar — not in control of the situation — as the CM candidate.
The choker’s game came into play in the RJD-led combine from the very start, with Congress not only giving a poor account of itself but ending up choking the alliance. Turning back on the candidature of Mr Yadav for the top post in the state, into a waiting game, led to simmering discontent within the Congress camp in Bihar, thereby putting avoidable pressure on the ‘Mahagathbandhan’.
There is no point in unnecessarily dithering on the CM nominee issue when the party did not have the wherewithal to sustain it or be in a bargaining position. An organisational set-up in shambles, in the true fashion of the AICC model, no local leader worth his salt to hold the party together, and the AICC in charge — as in other states and Union Territories like Jammu and Kashmir — seemed inept in handling the situation. The Congress’s dithering stand on the CM candidate was inexplicable. In fact, the GOP’s approach in this context was totally mysterious. This was particularly so in the absence of an alternative plan, which the party should have presented before the public. In this highly personality-based politics, magnified by none other than Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi, leaving the leadership vacuum in the midst of elections held no logic, and that too in a politically savvy Hindi-belt state like Bihar.
The second important factor, having direct bearing on the Bihar elections from the Congress’s point of view, was related to none other than the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha and senior party leader, Mr Rahul Gandhi. He started with a bang by successfully spearheading the movement on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voting rolls barely two months before elections, but ended with a whimper by again doing a disappearing act.
The movement, which also portrayed a joint face of the opposition combine with Mr Gandhi perched atop an open vehicle with leaders of the alliance partners, certainly made good optics. His roadshows evoked a positive public response and, in turn, gave sleepless nights to both the BJP-led ruling alliance and the Election Commission of India, who had become his prime target during the SIR campaign.
It was expected that the goodwill generated by this show — both for Congress and the alliance, and in particular for Mr Gandhi — would give a head start to the RJD-led bloc. But that was not to be.
The sudden disappearance of Mr Gandhi from the scene to embark on a foreign sojourn to far-off South America led to confusion. The tempo created by the movement led by him lost steam. It was further weakened by the seat-sharing shenanigans, leading to the positive effects of the SIR movement evaporating in the air.
The 15-day-long gap on account of Mr Gandhi’s foreign visit can prove counterproductive for the opposition alliance as the poll process progresses. There was near silence on the SIR issue in Bihar in his absence, though the message had reached the people. Such a visit to a very distant region of the world has raised many questions about Congress’s overall political strategy to prepare itself for the 2029 Lok Sabha elections, as the outcome of the Bihar polls could have a direct bearing on the general polls.
What was further appalling was the choker act played by Congress in the strategically important UT of Jammu and Kashmir, which faced its first Rajya Sabha election — to fill up four seats — after losing state status. The party, though a part of the ruling alliance with the National Conference, failed to act well in time to corner the NC into striking a balanced deal. Although NC president Dr Farooq Abdullah did offer one seat to Congress after announcing three candidates for the perceived safe seats, the GOP was brought into reckoning by him at a much later stage. Why did Congress reject the offer to contest the fourth seat, terming it ‘unsafe’? And at whose counselling? These are baffling questions warranting answers. Clearly, as in Bihar, this is the outcome of weak local leadership and a confused AICC looking the other way round. The party choked even before the game could enter mid-overs.
The writer is a policy analyst