HYDERABAD: While the performance of the Congress or the other regional parties like the NCP and the Jannayak Janta Party in the recent Assembly polls in two states was more than satisfactory, how did the Congress manage to lose its sitting Huzurnagar Assembly seat bypoll in Telangana by a huge margin? When octogenarian Sharad Pawar was able to give a tough fight to the BJP-Shiv Sena combine in Maharashtra and septuagenarian Bhupinder Singh Hooda did it in Haryana, why did Uttam Kumar Reddy (57) hand over the seat on a golden platter to the ruling TRS?
That interim Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s ill health will not permit her to go on whirlwind poll campaigns and Rahul Gandhi won’t be as active as he has resigned as party president, are well known. Equally well understood is the lack of financial support for fighting elections from the party’s central unit. Yet, Congressmen have found workarounds and were able to make decent gains in the by-elections across India as well.
So, why did it cave-in at Huzurnagar, a seat held by the party ever since the constituency was carved out in 2009? At every conceivable opportunity, Congress leaders harp on the fact that the Telangana State was carved out of Andhra Pradesh because of Sonia Gandhi’s (as UPA chairperson) determination to do so. Yet, the party apparatus is clearly incapable of converting the goodwill into votes. It’s time the Congress looks inward to understand its failings and craft a suitable way forward.
Remember Huzurnagar was vacated by the Congress state unit chief Uttam Kumar Reddy after he won the Nalgonda Lok Sabha seat. Reddy tried to keep the seat in his pocket by getting the party to field his wife from Huzurnagar, but voters thought otherwise. Though he got the plum post four years ago, he has failed in forging unity among party leaders and reviving the Congress at the grassroots level.
Despite a series of reverses, including losing seats considered Congress citadels, the party’s leaders don’t appear to have learnt any lessons. For, many of them are in some kind of la-la land, as they still behave as if they continue to hold the reins of power. Dissidence is in their bloodstream as is their belief that votes can be bought. Among their major follies is the failure to generate confidence among the people about their alternative programme to raise the common man’s quality of life. Merely criticising Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao as they do for everything will not do. Second, they point fingers at the electronic voting machines (EVMs) for their losses, conveniently ignoring their party’s victories elsewhere using EVMs. Thirdly, they claim they could not match the TRS’ money power. Which brings us to the question, do the Congress leaders in the state think they will ever come to power.
No party can stay in power forever. If the leaders were to introspect, they will admit they have stopped mingling with the people, taking up the common man’s issues and fighting for his rights. Instead, they prefer surfacing only during the poll time.
A joke doing the rounds after the Huzurnagar humiliation is that the Congress appears to be strong at only three places — Gandhi Bhavan, Golconda Hotel and Golconda Resorts. That is where they meet, discuss and then disperse. Alas, these three locations are not Assembly constituencies, so the question of winning them does not arise, the joke goes.
For the state party unit to get out of the rut, it needs a die-hard Congressman who is a people’s person, is accessible to the cadre and is not parachuted from the top. In short, a leader like the late Y S Rajasekhara Reddy. He was responsible for the Congress retaining power for a consecutive second term not only in united Andhra but also at the Centre. If the Central leadership does not apply itself to the task of revamping the state unit, it can forget the possibility of capturing power in a state that undeniably owes its birth to Sonia Gandhi.