Congress’s poor poll run continues in Northeast, but bypoll results bring some cheer

The Congress was very confident that the Left-Congress combine would trounce the BJP in Tripura. The initial assessment of the party was that the TIPRA Motha that won 13 seats cut into its votes in several seats.

“We couldn’t fully succeed in our attempt to consolidate the Opposition votes. Because at the end of the day, the BJP’s vote share has come down to 39 per cent from 43.59 per cent. But I think the loss was because the opposition votes got split between the Left-Congress alliance and TIPRA Motha. Definitely, it affected us,” All India Congress Committee’s (AICC) Tripura in-charge Ajoy Kumar told The Indian Express.

The Congress could not win a single seat in Tripura last time. The party had hoped to win five to eight of the 13 seats it contested and expected the Left to do the heavy lifting. The CPI(M) had told the Congress leadership that the Left would win 25 to 29 seats. But the Left, which had 16 seats last time, won only 11, all to the CPI(M).

As expected, Congress heavyweight Sudip Roy Barman won by a big margin — 8.162 votes — in the Agartala seat. State Congress president Birajit Sinha won in Kailashahar by 9,686 votes. In Banamalipur, Gopal Chandra Roy edged past BJP chief Rajib Bhattacharjee by a slender margin of 1,369 votes.

The Congress’s performance in Meghalaya too was far below its own expectations. In Nagaland, the party did not have much hope. In Meghalaya, the Congress was the single-largest party in 2018 with 21 MLAs but went into the polls this time without a single legislator. In November 2021, 12 legislators, including former Chief Minister Mukul Sangma, switched over to the Trinamool Congress (TMC). The others too jumped ship and joined other parties.

The party could win only five seats, a tally matched by the TMC. The Congress went into elections in Meghalaya with a large number of fresh faces. Of its 60 candidates, 47 were under the age of 45 years. But the gambit did not work and now Congress leaders are worried if they will be able to keep even the small flock with the party.

The only good news was the Congress’s surprise victory in bye-elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra. The party trounced the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and snatched the Sagardighi seat in West Bengal’s Murshidabad district from the ruling party. The TMC had been winning the seat since 2011. In Maharashtra’s Kasba Peth seat, the Congress pulled off a surprise victory and ended the BJP’s three-decade hold on the seat. In Tamil Nadu’s Erode East constituency, Congress veteran E V K S Elangovan was on course to defeat his AIADMK rival by a huge margin. As of 6.30 pm, he was ahead by 47,808 votes.

But it is not solely the Congress’s victory as Elangovan was the candidate of the ruling DMK-led alliance and benefited because of the DMK’s superior grassroots network and image of the M K Stalin-led government. In Jharkhand, it lost the Ramgarh seat to the AJSU.

Addressing a press conference, Congress communications chief Jairam Ramesh said the victory of the Congress in the bye-elections was significant. “We expected that the Left-Congress combine would get a majority in Tripura. The result was disappointing. In Nagaland, we knew that the BJP would form the government by breaking parties. In Meghalaya, we won some seats but our focus was to build the party for the future since all our 21 MLAs left the party since the 2018 elections,” he said.

Ramesh said the Congress expected the Left-Congress alliance to get 32-33 seats. He said the party would have to introspect on what went wrong in Tripura and said he would not say the decision to ally with the Left was wrong. The Congress’s central leadership largely stayed away from the campaign. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and senior leader Rahul Gandhi addressed one rally each in Nagaland and Meghalaya.

Asked about the absence of central leaders, Ramesh said it was not a national election and he didn’t think national leaders could have campaigned and swung the outcome in a state election. What is important, he said, is whether the local organisation is strong, the candidates credible, and the campaign waged by the local unit impactful and effective.

“To say that our performance in the northeastern states is because the national leaders did not campaign is a wrong interpretation,” he said. “It is a state election … local leadership matters and local factors are important. If our organisation is weak at the state and district levels, we cannot win elections.”

Barring Himachal Pradesh, the Congress has not won a single Assembly election since 2019. Even in the hill state, its winning vote share was less than 1 per cent.