After the drubbing in Bihar, Congress has harked back to its theme of “vote chori”, taking its cue from its leader, Rahul Gandhi, who has said the election was “not fair from the very beginning”. Once again, the party is accusing the Election Commission of partisan conduct. Indeed, the Gyanesh Kumar-led EC has invited distrust, treating the Opposition with disrespect and seemingly reading from the government’s script. This newspaper’s ground reports revealed how the EC’s conduct of the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls ahead of the Bihar poll morphed into a citizenship verification exercise that shifted the burden of proof on the vulnerable citizen. The SIR had to be rescued by the Supreme Court’s interventions. The CEC must also answer questions raised by the ongoing probe by the Karnataka SIT into irregular applications for deletions of names from the voter list of Aland constituency ahead of the 2023 assembly polls. And yet, these legitimate questions addressed to the EC cannot paper over the Congress’s own blatant denialism, and sheer bad faith, in response to a result that underlines its unchecked decline in Bihar. Congress’s sparse pickings — six of the 61 seats it contested — in an election that saw a record turnout, and where its “vote chori” refrain neither resonated on the ground, nor was reflected in voter petitions or complaints, speak of a political failure the party needs to squarely confront.
Congress needs to face the fact that its “vote chori” theme is not being picked up by even its allies. After Bihar, DMK chief Stalin emphasised that election outcomes reflect “welfare delivery, social and ideological coalitions, clear political message and dedicated management”, even as he criticised the EC. There are evident fault-lines even within Congress: Party president Mallikarjun Kharge spoke of “respecting the verdict of the people of Bihar” and of the “need to study and understand the results”, while fighting to “save” the “Constitution and democracy”. Most of all, Congress needs to ask itself whether, by its apocalyptic and obsessive framing, it is insulting the voter and accelerating its own narrowing. Constant vigil is necessary to keep the election process free and fair, and to ensure robustness of the system of checks and balances. But Congress’s allegations of an air-tight conspiracy between the ruling party and the EC is a political leap-too-far that is self-serving — and self-defeating.
After Bihar, if Congress leadership still does not ask the important questions — why the organisation is unable to communicate the party’s message on the ground or follow through on its initiatives, why it failed to project a united front with ally RJD, why it looks like a lifeless puppet on strings pulled erratically and whimsically in Delhi — the party must observe a moment of pause. A leadership so disengaged with the party’s reality cannot shape its future trajectory.
