Congress suffers worst-ever defeat in Maharashtra, can it bounce back?
The grand old party, which ruled Maharashtra without alliance support until 1990, is now in utter shambles
MUMBAI: The assembly election results have been catastrophic for the Congress, marking the party’s lowest-ever tally in the state – just 16 seats. It is also the worst-ever performance of the Congress in the political history of Maharashtra. In the 2019 assembly elections, the party won 44 seats, its lowest tally then. The party even survived the anti-Indira Gandhi wave after the Emergency of 1975, winning 62 seats in the 1978 assembly elections held less than a year after the Emergency was lifted. The Congress’s disastrous defeat is prompting analysts to ask how the party will survive its biggest-ever setback in the state where it was founded and flourished for decades.
The defeat is even more devastating as it comes only months after the Congress triumphed in the Lok Sabha elections, emerging with the biggest haul, party-wise – 13 of 48 seats – in June this year.
The grand old party, which ruled Maharashtra without alliance support until 1990, is now in utter shambles. It contested 101 seats in this election in an alliance with two other parties – the Shiv Sena (UBT) and the Nationalist Congress party (NCP), led by Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar, respectively. The coalition, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), was in fact confident of crossing the 145-seat mark needed for a simple majority in the 288-seat House. Ironically, the Congress’s worst-case scenario was a hung House, a close contest between the MVA and the ruling Mahayuti coalition, Congress insiders said.
Several senior Congress leaders have also been defeated. Among them is Balasaheb Thorat, who lost to Shiv Sena’s Amol Khatal by over 10,000 votes. He lost the Sangamner seat for the first time since 1985, after serving eight terms. State Congress president Nana Patole won by a whisker, by just 200-odd votes, from Sakoli. Other senior leaders who were defeated are Prithiviraj Chavan, a former chief minister, from Karad South; Yashomati Thakur from Teosa; and Manikrao Thakre from Digras.
Senior Congress leader Satej Patil was unable to hide his shock. “There are so many issues on which the people were angry with the government, whether the insult to Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj following the collapse of his statue [in Sindhudurg], rampant corruption, the increasing crime rate, among other things. Either these issues don’t matter to the people or the EVMs have been manipulated,” Patil told HT.
The Congress had even bounced back from the desertion of many senior party leaders ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in May this year, among them Ashok Chavan, Milind Deora, Sanjay Nirupam and Baba Siddique. “But it will be difficult for the Congress to come back from this defeat,” another leader said.
Some Congress leaders said the party’s poll campaign was not aggressive, while others said the party’s leaders spent more discussing the seat-sharing formula with its alliance partners than working on the ground. “Our campaign was not up to the mark. First of all, it was not aggressive as it should have been. Second, the issues it raised were not state-specific. When Mahayuti was talking about giving more money to voters, we were wasting time talking about saving the Constitution, which did not gain any traction as the issue had run its course during the Lok Sabha polls,” a Congress insider said.
“After winning the Lok Sabha polls in Maharashtra, we grew overconfident and spent too much time fighting each within the MVA coalition, over sharing of seats,” said another Congress leader.
This shocking defeat has impacted the morale of the rank and file in the state, which at 288 has the second-highest number of assembly seats after Uttar Pradesh (403). Looking ahead, the question is: can the Congress recover enough to avoid being decimated in future elections, in large states such as Uttar Pradesh?