‘Fight to save Constitution’: Boosted by big gains, Cong says will talk to allies on govt formation

Significantly, the Congress did not outrightly rule out the possibility of exploring the options for government formation.

Sources said the INDIA bloc has made some overtures to both JD(U) chief and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and TDP supremo Chandrababu Naidu – both in the NDA camp – who are together leading in 28 seats.

After a decade in political wilderness, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has finally managed to inject a sense of hope and confidence in the party’s leadership and workers that he can lead the 139-year-old organisation on the path to revival, although it is still a long and arduous road, despite Tuesday’s better-than-expected showing at the hustings. And playing perfect foil for the Gandhi family scion was Congress 81-year-old president Mallikarjun Kharge, a veteran of many a political battle.

The Congress, which was decimated in the 2014 and 2019 elections and written off in this election by its critics as well as some friends (read Mamata Banerjee, who had predicted that the party may not get even 40 seats), bounced back, but fell short of the three-figure mark by a whisker.

The party’s spirited campaign — centered around its populist manifesto promises, an aggressive social justice pitch and the political rhetoric that Narendra Modi 3.0 with a 400-plus mandate could change the Constitution and undermine the reservation regime — has helped it dent the BJP numbers substantially.

The Congress has, to some extent, shed its image as a weak link in the Opposition alliance. Its vote share increased from 19.67 per cent to 21.76 per cent, while the absolute number of votes jumped from 11.94 crore to 13.2 crore.

As it became clear that the BJP may fall well short of the halfway mark of 272, Kharge, Rahul and Congress parliamentary party chairperson Sonia Gandhi addressed a press conference. Kharge said the people’s mandate was against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and it was a political and moral defeat for him.

To questions on whether the Congress would explore the possibility of government formation, Rahul said: “We are going to have a meeting with our partners — the INDIA bloc partners tomorrow. These questions will be raised there and will be answered there. We respect our alliance partners and we are not going to make statements in the press without asking them.”

Kharge, however, added: “Jab tak hum apne alliance partners se baat nahi karenge, aur jo naye partners hum se judne wale hai… unse bhi kis tareeke se hum baat karke apne ko majority bana sakte hain woh dekhenge (Till we don’t talk to our alliance partners, and the new partners who are going to ally with us… we will see how we can talk to them as well and reach majority). If I disclose all our strategies here, Modiji will get alert.” He said the outcome was a victory of democracy and the people.

Rahul said the election was a “fight to save the Constitution”. “When our bank accounts were cancelled, chief ministers were arrested, parties were broken… It was on my mind, that the people would fight for the Constitution,” he said. “This election was not just against a political party. We fought this election against a political party, institutions, governance structure, intelligence agencies, CBI, ED, half the judiciary… These institutions were captured, threatened by Narendra Modi ji and Amit Shah ji,” he said, adding, “the country has said that we don’t want Mr Narendra Modi and Mr Amit Shah”.

The Congress has won or is leading in 99 seats across 23 states and union territories. Although the party has regained some ground in North India, it is still the South Indian states which are powering it.

Of the 99 seats which the Congress has either won or is leading in, 40 seats are from the four South Indian states of Kerala (14), Karnataka (9), Tamil Nadu (9) and Telangana (8). One each is from the Union Territories of Puducherry and Lakshadweep. It has once again drawn a blank in Andhra Pradesh. The Congress has edged out the BJP as the single largest party in the South. With 25 seats in Karnataka and four in Telangana, the BJP had 29 seats from the region in 2019, compared to Congress’s 28.

The Congress lost one seat in Kerala, but gained eight in Karnataka, five in Telangana and one in Tamil Nadu. While it retained the Puducherry Lok Sabha seat, it wrested the Lakshadweep seat from the NCP.

The party’s major gains this time are from four states — Maharashtra (where it has gone up from 1 to 12), Rajasthan (0 to 8), Haryana (0 to 5) and Karnataka (1 to 9). The resurgence in Rajasthan, where the Congress was routed in the Assembly elections just a few months ago, and Haryana, where Assembly elections are due some months from now, is heartwarming for the party.

In Uttar Pradesh, the Congress was leading in seven seats, its best performance after 2009 when it had won 21 seats. In 2019, the party had won two seats in UP which came down to one (Sonia Gandhi in Rae Bareli) last time. The Congress, however, could not make much gains in the rest of the Hindi-speaking states. It doubled its tally from one to two in both Bihar and Jharkhand. However, it lost one of the two seats it had in Chhattisgarh, as well as its lone seat in Madhya Pradesh.

The party also managed to open its account in Gujarat after a 10-year drought. In trouble-torn Manipur, the Congress won both the seats — Inner and Outer Manipur. The party, however, drew a blank in Andhra Pradesh, the hill states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, and Delhi.