The grand old party is heavily dependent on the Gandhi family and is hopeful that the Sonia-Rahul-Priyanka trio can revive the outfit
Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi proposes to undertake a Maha Padayatra for 30 days from September 6 with a view to swing the fortunes of the party in the ensuing elections in Uttar Pradesh. It will cover a total of 223 Assembly and 55 lok Sabha seats in the State. This follows the enthusiastic response in Varanasi on August 2 when Congress president Sonia Gandhi did a road show. Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi will be the trio who are expected to deliver in Uttar Pradesh.
After Mahatma Gandhi undertook the historic Dandi march in 1930, Padayatras have been used as a potent weapon by leaders to win the support of the masses. BJP patriarch lK Advani got political dividends after his famous Rathyatra in 1989. YS Rajasekhara Reddy did a three-month walk in 2003 in Andhra Pradesh, which won him the State. In 2013, N Chandrababu Naidu did a similar 1,700-km Padayatra, after which he was elected as the Chief Minister. Even Aaam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal undertook a Padayatra before the 2015 Delhi Assembly polls which got him an unprecedented majority.
This is not the first time that the Congress scion has taken up this method to woo voters. Even before, during the 2012 Uttar Pradesh polls, he launched an arduous 105-km march from Bhatta-Parsaul in Greater Noida to Aligarh, to highlight the farmers’ issue. He also undertook Padayatras in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telengana and elsewhere.
Uttar Pradesh is crucial for the Congress to revive its political fortunes. The grand old party plans to harp on its past glory with a campaign theme ‘27 saal Uttar Pradesh behal’ to project the deterioration of the State under the leadership of the BJP, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP) regimes since the Congress lost power in 1989. The party was enthused after the Bihar elections and is keen to replicate that success in the ensuing polls to Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Manipur and Goa.
The party has hired political strategist Prashant Kishor who is touted to have ensured victory for both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. With barely a few months to go before the polls, the party might need more than Kishor to pull the rabbit out of the hat to win the State.
Kishor has his work cut out as he has already rubbed the various factions on the wrong side. He managed to make Sheila Dikshit the chief ministerial face to woo the 12 per cent Brahmin votes. The BSP is soft on the Congress. The party strategy includes rallies, yatras and road shows. There are also plans to announce the candidates two months in advance, departing from the usual practice.
The Congress lost its core vote bank of Dalit-Muslim-Brahmins since 1989. The SP has Muslim-Yadavs, the BSP has Jatavs/other backward class, Dalits and the BJP has the votes of the upper caste and urban people. Essentially, the Congress has to compete for the Muslim vote with the SP and the BSP and for the Dalit vote with the BSP and the BJP. While the BJP is banking heavily on upper castes and non-Yadav other backward classes for a repeat of the 2014 performance, the core vote bank of the BSP (Dalits) and SP (Yadavs) remain intact.
As per current opinion polls, the main contest is between the BJP and the BSP with the SP facing anti-incumbency. If people see the Congress as an alternative to the SP and the BSP as well as in position to take on the BJP, the Congress fortunes can improve. But this is indeed a big ‘if’. From 30.5 per cent vote share in 1985, the Congress’ vote share came down to 11.63 per cent in 2012. In the 2014 lok Sabha elections, the party got only 7.50 per cent votes and in 2009, 18.25 per cent. In the last Assembly polls, it won just 28 of the 403 seats in the State and a mere 22 and 25 seats in the 2007 and 2002 Assembly polls respectively.
So how will the party achieve its goalIJ The plus is that though in small numbers, the Congress has its presence in all the regions. It plans to bring workers out of dormancy by reaching out to them. The main thing is to connect with the voters. So, instead of big-ticket events, the party plans to conduct mohalla meetings to gain foothold.
The Congress has to overcome many obstacles to achieve its goal. There is intense factionalism, and it has no organisation at the gross root level. So far, Rahul Gandhi’s experiments in democracy have been in vain. They have made very little impact on the youth Congress and even less on the Congress.