After the Shiv Sena decided to sit in the Opposition in the Assembly, the Congress found itself deprived of the post of Leader of Opposition in yet another State legislature.
Indeed, over the last one year, regional outfits have begun to replace the Congress not just as the ruling party as in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana but, in States where the BJP has come to power such as Maharashtra and Haryana, even as the principal Opposition.
“The Congress is itself responsible for this situation,” Janata Dal (United) general secretary K.C. Tyagi said. “In Haryana and Bihar, where there is a secular alternative to the BJP — the Indian National Lok Dal in the first and the JD (U)-Rashtriya Janata Dal combine in the second — it is not so bad. But in States such as Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, where the Congress’s numbers have been steadily slipping and there is no secular alternative, things are grim. Look at Maharashtra: the political space is occupied by two communal parties, the BJP and the Shiv Sena.”
ADVERTISEMENT
If after the recent Maharashtra Assembly polls, the Congress (42) found itself in the third spot, behind the Sena (63), in Haryana, too, it came third (15) behind the INLD (18).
In Andhra Pradesh, after a 10-year run, the Congress presided over a disastrous bifurcation of the State: in the Assembly elections earlier this year in the newly formed States of Telangana and the residual Andhra Pradesh, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi and the Telugu Desam Party, respectively, came to power. In Telangana, the Congress came a poor second, winning just 18 seats in the 119-member Assembly; in Andhra Pradesh, it came fourth behind the TDP (102), the YSR Congress Party(67), and the BJP (4), scoring a nought.
The Congress is currently ruling only nine States — Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh in the north, Karnataka and Kerala (where it heads the United Democratic Front) in the south, and Assam, Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh in the northeast. In Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand, where it is the junior partner in government, the coming elections is likely to see the party move to the Opposition benches.
ADVERTISEMENT
A footnote to the Congress’s reverses is the way in which it went from number two to number three in Odisha’s Kandhamal LS seat in the space of a few months. In the general elections, the BJP was a poor third, but when the sitting Biju Janata Dal MP died and his wife contested it recently, the Congress slid to third position: in terms of vote share.
The writing is on the wall.