NEW DELHI: The Congress' decimation in the assembly polls is expected to give regional players more bargaining power to challenge the grand old party's big brother attitude as efforts are on take make a united opposition front to take on the BJP in 2024 elections and AAP’s massive Punjab win is set to change the opposition dynamics.
With AAP expanding its feet to Punjab, the only regional party to rule the second state after Delhi has given a fillip to party chief Arvind Kejriwal’s candidature as a national leader. Riding high on its landslide victory in Punjab, AAP leaders made an announcement that the party will emerge as a national alternative and replace the Congress.
The Congress now has governments in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. Both the states are slated to go for polls in 2023. And going by trends that these states never saw an incumbent government getting a second term, the party needs to work hard to gain ground before general elections, said a worried party leader.
The party has not been in good health in at least one of two states – Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh --that are expected to go to the polls later this year.
However, Congress officially tried to brush aside such comments. When asked, Congress leader RS Surjewala accepted that none can deny that win in Punjab increased Kejriwal’s stature but that a 9-year-old party cannot replace the Congress’s seven decades of legacy and its status as a principal opposition party.
Regional players like Trinamool Congress, Telangana Rashtra Samiti and NCP have questioned the grand old party’s ability to take on the BJP and that it will be regional players who could put up a fight against the saffron party.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has been very vocal about a non-Congress front to take on the BJP and now Telangana CM K Chandrasekhar Rao has joined the bandwagon as he met leaders of non-Congress parties, including party’s Maharashtra allies Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray and NCP chief Sharad Pawar. Also on the list was JMM chief Hemant Soren, who is leading a Congress alliance government in Jharkhand.
“Does Congress contest elections for winning? They are engaged in so much infighting and they end up contesting each other,” said AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh.
The TMC has been upset after the Congress decided not to ally with the party in Goa on account that the Mamata Banerjee-led party poached its candidates in the state.