While the results of the Bihar assembly elections were agonizing to the Congress, the party is now faced with another serious pain in Karnataka, where it held power for the past over two and a half years. Two stalwarts behind the party’s big electoral win there in 2023, namely Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar are at loggerheads. Shivakumar wants to head the government for the second half of the present five-year term, but the chief minister is in no mood to oblige. Kumar argues that such an understanding had been reached at the time of formation of the Congress ministry in 2023. Now he feels it’s time for him to assert and even bay for Siddaramaiah’s blood. The party’s central leadership finds itself in a quandary also as both these leaders command strong backing from sections of the legislators and different social segments. The party’s national president Mallikarjun Kharge, a former Karnataka chief minister, does not have a major say in such situations as the central control of the party rests with the Nehru-family triumvirates, Rahul, Sonia and Priyanka.
The May, 2023 victory of the Congress in Karnataka was a huge morale boost to the party, at a time when the principal national opposition was finding itself in a corner due to the overarching influence of the ruling BJP across most states. The saffron party now rules 14 states while the Congress rules tiny Himachal Pradesh where it won the 2022 polls, Telangana, where the party wrested power from the regional Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) in the 2024 assembly polls and Karnataka. The others who run state governments are regional parties. The Congress party’s plight in the North-East, where it once held sway, is evident from the fact that it lost its sole MLA in the Meghalaya Assembly four months ago in a defection to the ruling NPP.
The repeated drubbing for the Congress party in Bihar was thanks to several factors. It had no strong regional leader to project in the elections, unlike the JDU or the RJD or even the BJP. The grand old party no longer has a strong organizational network in the state, as also in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh and most other states. Projection of Rahul Gandhi or his long padayatra by themselves did not help. The Congress victory in Telangana was made possible by the aggressive campaigns of the youthful yet seasoned Revant Reddy against the TRS government. He went on to become the chief minister. So too with Karnataka, where the collective might of Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar was supported also by the doles that the party promised to women, like a monthly financial assistance, free travel to them on state buses etc. Such tempting offers were made by Revant Reddy in Telangana and Chandrababu Naidu in residuary Andhra Pradesh and they laughed their way to success. Nitish Kumar’s offer of a hefty Rs 10,000 each to women from some 23 lakh families on poll-eve helped him retain power for a fresh term. The Congress party’s central leadership must learn from the successes of others and reorient its policies and strategies.
