The Congress party will have to wait longer for the “changes in ways you cannot imagine” that its vice president Rahul Gandhi had announced at the party headquarters in New Delhi on December 8 last year after the party lost in four of the five states that went to polls. Even after Sunday’s losses in Maharashtra and Haryana, the organisational change will remain on hold for now, sources have told The Hindu.
“The results are surely a disappointment and the party will reflect on the losses it has suffered but there is no timeline to the organisational change,” a former UPA minister said.
Mr. Gandhi, who was touring cyclone ravaged Visakhapatnam issued a statement saying: “We accept the verdict of people. People have voted for change, after 15 years of our government in Maharashtra and 10 years in Haryana.” He congratulated the BJP and said that the party will “work hard on the ground to once again earn the confidence of the people.”
There is however concern in certain quarters in the party, especially among young leaders that unlike Narendra Modi, Mr. Gandhi did not lead from the front and continues to drag his feet on the changes he promised. “Some of the candidates who won on BJP tickets in Haryana are defectors from the Congress. We just kept waiting for the high command to act,” a young leader handpicked by Gandhi in the last reshuffle said.
The Congress which was the single largest party in both states five years ago, failed to finish even second. Modi’s risk taking has seen the BJP nearly double its vote share in Maharashtra. In Haryana, it has gone from four seats to 47 in five years. Mr. Modi can now claim the party’s success as his success as a matter of right. By contrast, efforts began in the Congress to shield Mr. Gandhi from the colossal losses even before the results. He addressed 10 rallies – six in Maharashtra and four in Hayana – as part of the Congress’s old strategy to shield him from all that goes wrong with the party but give him credit for all that it gets right. Mr. Modi displayed greater energy with 35 rallies, increasing the number by 10 from the original plan as he went along.
