After its worst defeat in Maharashtra in the 2014 Parliament and Assembly polls, the Congress is limping back towards revival. However, collectively the party does not appear to have learnt any lessons to stand united.
Maharashtra is a textbook example of the working of the Congress system at the state level. The party has occupied the ruling space in Maharashtra for most of the past 60 plus years. Between 2004 and 2014 it had to share the space with Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). Though both the parties maintained a good working relationship in running the government for 10 year, their rule was riddled with corruption.
The party that won over 200 seats (out of 288) in the assembly several times in past has been struggling to get to three digits since 1990. The NCP’s entry in the political arena in 1999 shrank them further. In 2009 most of the Congress leaders wanted to sever ties with the NCP before the Assembly elections hoping to win more than 100 seats. However, that did not happen and the Congress won 82 seats. In 2014, the tally slid further to 42, the party’s worst performance in the state.
The Congress has been completely uprooted from Vidarbha, North Maharashtra and Marathwada. In Konkan, Narayan Rane – who was a chief minister in the Shiv Sena-BJP government in 1998 – is the face-saver for the Congress, while it faces a tough challenge from its ally, the NCP, in western Maharashtra, its erstwhile bastion. The party apparatus had withered and workers were left demoralized after the devastating defeat in 2014. The first sign of the party’s revival came early this year when it won the maximum number of seats in rural local body elections. However, at the same time the party couldn’t do much in the corporation polls in Navi Mumbai and Aurangabad, underlining the fact that its hopes lie in the rural area, its traditional base.
The Congress party’s state president Ashok Chavan’s efforts to revive the party have obvious limitations due to the Adarsh housing scam case. Rane’s entry into the state legislature during the monsoon session earlier this year created a stir. But in the past few days, his name too is being taken in a case that the Enforcement Directorate is said to be investigating. Former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan is another leader who has the vision to revive the party in the state. But he lacks a mass following and has little support amongst state leaders. The party survives in pockets where leaders have a good connect with the people. But they lack statewide appeal.
The BJP government in the state had been systematically targeting the cooperative sector – the APMCs, the credit societies, sugar mills and cooperative banks. Its success in this endeavour would be the biggest threat to the Congress.