One reason why the BJP is very sure of winning the 2024 elections is the absence of a combined opposition or even a single strong opposition party in the country today. The fact that the regional parties in Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere have refused to join the much-touted Bharat Jodo Yatra (BJY) led by Rahul Gandhi informs that the regional satraps are all keen to play their part in the national scene without alliances. That this is a tall order and will only allow the BJP a smooth ride goes without saying. Hence the overconfidence of the BJP in Meghalaya is not without reasons. The fact that the Congress won the recent state elections in Himachal Pradesh is no guarantee of a Congress comeback at the national level. The Congress needs to reinvent itself and one of the areas that it really needs to search its soul is in arbitrary decision -making. In Meghalaya we are already seeing internal dissensions within the Congress owing to the old habit of taking decisions without consultations with grass-roots workers.
The very fact that all the 17 MLAs of the Congress Party abandoned the Party was mainly because of the appointment of a State Congress President based on the dictates of the High Command rather than by a process of voting. It is not without reason therefore that senior Congressmen and women abandoned the Party that they had long owed their allegiance to. It is a fact that the Congress needs young, dynamic leadership at the national level and not a loyalist of the Nehru-Gandhi family. That the Family is unwilling to let go and fears that a Party led by anyone other than a Nehru-Gandhi or a loyalist of the family will disintegrate shows a lack of faith in the people of this country. If the Congress claims that it is the only advocate of democracy simply because it led the freedom movement, it also forgets that Mahatma Gandhi had suggested that post-independence the Party should be disbanded to allow for the formation of a more inclusive party with a new outlook to take the leadership position in an independent India. It is inevitable that a party formed before India’s independence has over time developed vested interests and that is what is ailing the Congress.
While leading liberal thinkers like Yogendra Yadav who have joined the BJY believe that Rahul Gandhi is creating waves that now threaten the BJP-RSS flagship, what happens after the BJY and how the Congress re-orients itself across the states will be key to its image makeover. Also, whether the Congress can be the centripetal force uniting all the non-BJP parties is yet to unfold. Naturally the BJP is upbeat; hence the claim of the Meghalaya BJP that no party/parties can form a government without it.
