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Wednesday, May 28, 2008
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Congress takes stock of debacle

Special Correspondent

Price rise, Jaipur blasts and sympathy wave seen to have helped BJP

NEW DELHI: Two days after being shown the door in Karnataka, the Congress on Tuesday formally took stock of the verdict at a high-level meeting convened by party president Sonia Gandhi and attended by key poll strategists and the State’s leadership. Though the central leadership of the party has been analysing the results since Sunday, this was the first formal analysis involving most of those who called the shots in the election.

Besides price rise, the Jaipur blasts on the eve of the second phase of polling and sympathy for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at being denied a chance to rule Karnataka, the absence of an organisational structure at the grassroots level were viewed as among the key reasons for the Congress not emerging as the single largest party in the State.

Practically no district of Karnataka has had a District Congress Committee since the last organisational election in 2005. This was a serious handicap during the elections as the organisational structure — crucial for booth-level management of polls — was just not there.

Add to this the impact of the Jaipur blasts which the BJP cashed in on heavily, accusing the Congress of being soft on terror and playing on the general feeling of insecurity among people after every such attack.

Terrorism, Congress poll strategists explained, impacted the first and second phases of polling. While the Jaipur blasts on May 14 happened just two days ahead of the second phase of polling, a blast in a district court in Hubli on May 9 — the day before the first phase — provided the BJP an issue to flog the Congress with.

The BJP, again, used the price rise issue to the hilt, coming out with advertisements to highlight the inability of the Congress-led government at the Centre to arrest spiralling prices.

The only consolation for the Congress was that it continued to lead the pack in vote share. Also, the party lost out in as many as 21 seats by less than 3,000 votes; missing out two segments by less than 100 votes.

The leaders who attended the meeting were former Karnataka Chief Minister Dharam Singh, Pradesh Congress Committee president Mallikarjun Kharge, general secretary in-charge of the State Prithviraj Chavan, central leaders roped in for the crucial poll — Vayalar Ravi, Digvijay Singh and Santosh Bagrodia — besides Ms. Gandhi’s political secretary Ahmed Patel.

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