After Haryana setback, question before Congress: Was banking only on Hooda the right call?

With the trends indicating an anti-climax, there is massive unease in the party. Behind the scenes, a blame game is waiting to begin, according to party insiders. The party will now be back to the drawing board. And there are many questions to be answered: was it politically wise to put all the eggs in the Bhupinder Singh Hooda basket, how did the open tug of war between the Hoodas and Kumari Selja for the Chief Minister’s post play out, were there lacunae in the selection of candidates (Hooda’s detractors have been claiming that he cornered a lion’s share of the tickets) and was the party overconfident and complacent?

And what will be the immediate implication? The narrative of a Congress revival that it assiduously built after the Lok Sabha elections will be punctured. And what about the impact of Rahul Gandhi who campaigned extensively in the state, taking out a yatra in the last week of campaigning? Had it swept to a victory, the party was expected to give all the credit for a victory to Gandhi.

Congress leaders said the party that got 28.08% of the votes in 2019 has crossed the 40% mark. The BJP, which had garnered a 36.49% vote share and 40 seats in 2019 was leading in 48 seats with a 39.50% vote share, as of 12.20 pm.

The trend so far indicates that both the Congress and the BJP have benefitted at the expense of smaller parties, especially the Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) led by Dushyant Chautala. The JJP, which won 10 seats with a vote share of 14.84% is leading in none. Its vote share so far was a dismal 0.9% at 12.20 pm.

The Congress, which was swept out of power by the BJP in Haryana in 2014, showed signs of clawing back slowly and steadily since the last Assembly elections of 2019. It drew a blank in the state in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections as well but the first signs of change became visible in the Assembly elections a few months later.

In Jammu and Kashmir, where the Congress was riding on the coattails of the National Conference (NC), it was leading in eight seats as of 12.20 pm: two in Jammu and the rest in Kashmir Valley.

What the Congress was hoping for

The Congress, which was relegated to the third position in 2014, winning 15 seats with a 20.7% vote share, bounced back in 2019 bagging 31 seats. In the recent Lok Sabha elections, the party further improved its position. Translated to Assembly seats, that meant the Congress leading in 42 as against the BJP’s 46. The hope in the Congress camp was for further improvement.

Since the winter of 2018, the Congress has not won a single Assembly election in Northern India barring, the victory in the hill state of Himachal Pradesh in 2022. A victory in Haryana no doubt would have added spring to its step, allowing it to approach the elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand on a stronger footing. The Congress, along with the larger INDIA bloc, was hoping to deliver many political messages.

The Congress hoped a victory in Haryana would have strengthened the narrative that the BJP was losing its grip in parts of north India, the first glimpse of which was seen in the Lok Sabha elections six months ago when it lost seats in states such as Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, and Bihar while retaining its ground in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand. Consequently, the BJP’s tally came down from a dominant 303 to 240.

Since Narendra Modi’s ascent in national politics in 2014, India has seen an unquestioned single-party dominance of the BJP. While the ruling party still retains its dominant position at the centre of Indian politics, The Congress hoped a victory in Haryana would be the first indication that the country’s electoral politics is returning, albeit slowly, to the conventional balance, where “parties win some and lose some”. But now, the Congress appears to have snatched a defeat from the jaws of victory in Haryana. In Jammu and Kashmir, it was riding on the coattails of the National Conference.