For the crisis-ridden Congress, the victory in Himachal Pradesh will be a morale-booster, though its performance in Gujarat was disastrous.
In a nail-biting finish, the Congress secured a comfortable majority with 40 seats in the 68-member HP Assembly. In contrast, in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state, it secured its worst tally ever of 20 in the assembly of 182 members, as the Bharatiya Janata Party pulled off a historic win with 156 seats.
In hindsight, the results aren’t surprising.
The party’s campaign in Gujarat didn’t match the effort in Himachal Pradesh, where central and state units worked in tandem to offer a cohesive vision to voters under the leadership of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel and Rajeev Shukla, All India Congress Committee in-charge of the state.
The state leadership comprising Pratibha Singh, Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu and Brahmin face Mukesh Agnihotri buried their differences and led a pointed campaign that focussed on 10 guarantees, especially the restoration of the Old Pension Scheme, 1 lakh government jobs, and the implementation of the Har Ghar Laxmi scheme, which promises Rs 1,500 per month for women.
Matrix Ground Strategies micro-managed the polls from the booth level to the top. An official associated with it said that for the first time, the party reached out to voters multiple times so that its promises looked credible enough to trump the formidable BJP in a close contest. At the insistence of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, multiple surveys on winnability were conducted.
The three leaders made themselves accessible all the time, unlike the heavy-handedness that the central leadership has shown in previous assembly elections, in which its involvement undermined the state leadership. This happened because factions of the Congress sorted out their differences months before the campaign began.
Gandhi Vadra, Baghel and Shukla also gelled well, Congress sources said.
While Gandhi Vadra oversaw the campaign almost on a daily basis, Baghel and his aide, former journalist Vinod Verma, coordinated between party units and private firms the Congress had hired. The team ensured that ground-level workers remained accessible through the campaign.
As part of the micromanagement, the party created a war room to reach out to voters on various multimedia platforms. The energetic social media campaign was followed up by a realistic strategy to focus on 40-odd swing seats, where victories could deliver a majority. Big rallies by central leaders like Gandhi Vadra, Sachin Pilot and others added to the concerted backroom efforts.
देवभूमि हिमाचल के मुख्यमंत्री व उप-मुख्यमंत्री के रूप में शपथ लेने पर श्री सुखविंदर सिंह सुक्खू जी एवं मुकेश अग्निहोत्री जी को बधाई एवं शुभकामनाएं।
देवभूमि की जनता ने कांग्रेस को ऐतिहासिक जनादेश दिया है। मुझे विश्वास है कि आपके कुशल नेतृत्व में प्रदेश विकास का नया अध्याय लिखेगा। pic.twitter.com/h1u4lIsqOR
— Priyanka Gandhi Vadra (@priyankagandhi) December 11, 2022
The party’s Gujarat campaign is a study in contrast. Despite sensing discontent and fatigue with 27 years of BJP rule, the party conspicuously chose to contest on local issues.
Its state leadership was reluctant to invite central leaders, who it believed would create controversies and help the BJP to polarise the electorate. Candidates focused on winning their seats rather than forming a government.
A Congress candidate who expected to win but eventually lost his deposit had told this correspondent that the party’s campaign was deliberately muted, and that state Congress leaders believed that its social engineering formula of consolidating OBCs, Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims would work only if candidates addressed their regional concerns through a door-to-door campaign.
The Congress campaign became practically invisible amidst the flamboyance of other parties, despite Rahul Gandhi having sounded the poll bugle in a big rally two months ago by making 10 guarantees to the Gujarati voters ― quite similar to the promises in Himachal Pradesh.
Also read: How Important Is Communal Politics to Gujarat? In Final Phase, State Faces Crucial Question
The Congress failed to offer a cohesive vision to voters and came across as an uninterested party lacking ideological clarity to counter the hegemonic BJP. Across Gujarat, people complained that the Congress had remained absent through the last five years, though it had 77 MLAs after the 2017 assembly polls. It wasn’t a credible alternative to the BJP for a majority of those who were critical of the ruling party.
The Congress’s social engineering formula also failed miserably. A more charismatic AAP took away its traditional votes, while the BJP entered its bastions. CSDS-Lokniti data shows that voters of the Other Backward Classes and Adivasis shifted their loyalty towards the BJP unprecedentedly, while Dalits and Muslims voted less for the Congress.
For more than two decades, the state leadership has remained almost unaccountable for its multiple failures, and the central and state leaderships could not possibly work together. Now, the Congress can try to be a vibrant opposition. That would be a good starting point for a party that still managed to get around 87 lakh votes, despite its colossal loss.
With Rajasthan and Karnataka going to the polls in 2023, which model will the Congress follow ― Himachal Pradesh or Gujarat?
To begin with, the central leadership faces the challenge of resolving differences between Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot in Rajasthan and D.K. Shivakumar and Siddaramaiah in Karnataka.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
