Congress loses before election to Modi.

Delhi, India — New Delhi After a little more than two months had passed, the Congress party, which is the most powerful opposition force in India, appeared to be on a roll.

During a state-wide march, Rahul Gandhi, the head of the party of Mahatma Gandhi, which is the oldest political movement in the country, had attracted enormous audiences. This had rekindled hopes in the Congress party, which had been battling for relevance following a series of political failures.
As a result of the party’s victory in the legislative elections held in the southern state of Karnataka, which is home to the startup capital of Bengaluru, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is currently led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was deposed. Furthermore, according to the results of opinion surveys, it was anticipated that it would win four out of the five states that voted for their state assemblies in November. These states were Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, Chattisgarh, and Mizoram.

According to veterans of the party, those predicted victories would have provided the Congress with the necessary support to challenge Modi in the general elections that are expected to take place in a few weeks.

On the contrary, the reverse occurred. The polls of public opinion were biased. Only Telangana was won by the Congress party.

According to every opinion poll, Congress was leading in the elections for Madhya Pradesh by a margin of two percent of votes, but we ended up losing by eight percent of votes. Digvijay Singh, a senior party leader and a former chief minister of the state in central India, is curious about the reasons behind the fact that the actual results ended up being different from the opinion polls.

As the 138-year-old party gets ready to compete against Modi in the upcoming national election, analysts and Congress leaders believe that providing a straightforward response to this question and others like it, which are related to the gap that exists between the party’s expectations and the results of prior elections, could be crucial to the party’s prospects of winning.

A successful showing in those state elections would have validated Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, also known as the Uniting India March. This march had seen him walk more than 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles) over the course of 150 days, beginning in Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of the country, and ending in Kashmir, which is ruled by the Indian government. In the majority of the states that had elections in November, the Congress party was engaged in a direct one-on-one competition with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and was in the opposition. They were trying to capitalize on the anti-incumbency voter emotion that was directed against the government that was in power.
Where did things go wrong?
It was stated by a Congress leader in Madhya Pradesh who asked to remain anonymous that he had advised the party leadership that it needed to concentrate mobilization efforts around the 21 percent tribal vote in the state, but that his attempts to persuade them were unsuccessful. This is what the leader had to say: “Congress was very complacent.” According to him, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was successful in gaining support by concentrating on tribal areas and securing their votes. Many of the seats that the Congress had won in the assembly elections held in 2018 were now held by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The same unfolded in the states of Rajasthan and Chattisgarh, where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) also gained the majority of seats in jurisdictions where tribal votes are the most prevalent, reversing what had occurred in 2018.
Party insiders also accuse officials of being arrogant for rejecting the offers of smaller regional parties such as the Samajwadi Party. The Samajwadi Party is mostly headquartered in Uttar Pradesh, which is the most populous state in India, but it also has a modest presence in Madhya Pradesh.

A number of individuals, including the former chief minister Singh, have the perception that a more nefarious scheme is currently being carried out. Singh has asserted that the BJP was able to defy opinion surveys in the most recent elections by manipulating electronic voting machines and a process that maintains a paper trail of voting.

Critics of the Congress point out that it is fast to accept results when it wins using the same mechanisms that it criticizes when it loses. However, there is little substantial proof that those elections were rigged in a systematic manner.
The remark made by Singh is shared by a significant number of Congress leaders. One of them stated that it was obvious that the party was losing in Madhya Pradesh, and that it was not due to any kind of foul play but rather due to bad “both management.” This is a reference to the practice of party workers making sure that their voters appear and vote at every polling station.

By incorporating regional parties into a national coalition known as the INDIA alliance, the Congress party has made an effort to resurrect its decline in popularity. The BJP was obliged to reevaluate its own approach as a result of that action.

Since that time, however, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been able to successfully chip away at the alliance that is India. Nitish Kumar, the chief minister of the state of Bihar in the north, has defected and joined the NDA coalition, which is led by the BJP. Mamata Banerjee, the Chief Minister of West Bengal, has also left India; however, it is not yet apparent whether she would join the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which she was a member of twenty years ago.
Numerous friends of the Congress party have been subjected to the fury of law enforcement agencies that are under the control of the Modi government in New Delhi. One example of this is Hemant Soren, the former chief minister of the central state of Jharkhand, who was arrested in January on charges related to corruption although he has denied the allegations.

However, party sources acknowledge that Congress itself is equally to blame for the parties’ decision to break away from its alliance during this time. For one reason? They claim that it is unwilling to accommodate partners in seat-sharing in a sufficient manner, which is an issue that Uttar Pradesh’s Kumar also brought up.
According to Sanjay Kumar, a political analyst and professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi, the Congress is confronted with an issue that lies at the core of that failure. In the short term, it is interested in working together with smaller parties, but in the long run, it is more interested in competing for all of the seats in the parliament on its own.

According to Kumar, the Congress party is currently facing a predicament in which it must choose between the short term and the long term.

In an effort to sway public opinion in favor of the Congress party, Rahul Gandhi has attempted to carry out a long march similar to the one he had previously undertaken. The most recent edition of the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, also known as the “Uniting India Through Justice March,” is expected to travel a distance of 6,500 kilometers (4,000 miles) from the eastern to western regions of the country.

Experts, on the other hand, have questioned if it is reasonable for the party to be concentrating on major philosophical concerns at a time when the nation is in the midst of election campaigning in which the winner takes all.

“The timing of the yatra is peculiar. According to political expert Harish Khare, who was referring to the lower house of the Indian parliament, “it has become a distraction at a time when the party’s attention and imagination should be fully geared for the Lok Sabha poll.” On the other hand, Rahul has not been successful in stealing the narrative away from the BJP, nor has he been able to excite the rank and file of the Congress party.

Many of the states that the new march had been through at the time, like West Bengal and Bihar, were managed by parties that were members of the Indian National Congress (INDIA). A public issue was raised by Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal, regarding the purpose of the march that was traveling through a state that is an ally.

Those who are opposed to the march have questioned whether or not it is a part of an endeavor to establish Rahul Gandhi’s own brand.

On the other hand, P Chidambaram, a prominent Congress lawmaker and former Indian finance minister, is of the opposite opinion. “Rahul does not have a desire to dominate others. According to Chidambaram, “If he had wanted to, he would have been Prime Minister a long time ago.”

Chidambaram made the observation that the members of the INDIA alliance will be engaged in direct battles with the BJP and its coalition in the vast majority of the 543 seats that are available in the Lok Sabha.

The Congress, on the other hand, has been portraying the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as an authoritarian-minded party, and it has been claiming that the next elections are ultimately a fight over the survival of Indian democracy. However, observers say that the Congress is having a difficult time convincing voters to accept this narrative.

Kumar, an analyst at the CSDS, stated that the Congress administration does not have a constructive objective. When it comes to the question of whether or not the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) poses a threat to democracy and freedom of expression, the general public is not particularly convinced about it.

Over the past few days, the level of unease that exists inside the party has increased. In order to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Ashok Chavan, a senior leader and former chief minister in Maharashtra, which holds the second-most seats in the Lok Sabha after Uttar Pradesh, resigned from the Congress party. Almost immediately, he was selected for a seat in the Rajya Sabha, which is the upper house of parliament.
The Congress party made the claim on Friday that its bank accounts had been frozen due to claims that it had failed to pay federal taxes.

Chidambaram, who is a member of the Congress team that is preparing the party’s manifesto, stated that people were concerned about inflation, which has stuck at more than 4 percent for practically the entirety of Modi’s current term in power, and unemployment, which remains around 8 percent. Chidambaram is a member of the Congress team that is drafting the party’s manifesto.

On the other hand, he admitted that in order for the Congress to be “in a position to win against the BJP,” the party would have to be able to channel any resentment that the public could feel in its favor. In addition, there is not much time left for it.