DM Monitoring
NEW DELHI: India’s embattled Congress party won big in a southern state election this weekend, exceeding expectations and gaining fresh momentum to take on entrenched Prime Minister Narendra Modi in national elections next year, top politicians and analysts said.
At the same time, they cautioned that Congress’ victory on Saturday in Karnataka state, home to the booming tech hub of Bengaluru, was largely due to local factors.
The popular Modi’s strongman image and Hindu polarisation strategy, they said, would likely power his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to victory in upcoming elections in the heartland states and nationally.
But for the beleaguered opposition party, which won fewer than 10% of the 545 seats in parliament’s lower house in 2019, the win provides a foothold to re-establish itself as a political force to be reckoned with in the world’s largest democracy.
“This is an opportunity for Congress to enhance state efficiencies in Karnataka, build a new governance model and showcase that to the country,” said Prithvi Datta Chandra Shobhi, a political commentator who teaches at Krea University in southern India.
For the near term, however, he added: “These results have no bearing on the 2024 elections, they don’t help us to predict what might happen either in Karnataka or nationally so far as Congress’ chances are concerned.”
Congress, which fared poorly in Saturday’s municipal elections in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh in the north, where the BJP swept all 17 mayoral seats, next faces elections late this year in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh states.
Among its many challenges: to resolve internal rivalries, market its platform of welfare economics, forge strategic alliances with India’s multitude of regional parties, and counter the strong messaging power of Modi and the BJP, analysts said.
Congress ruled India for 54 of the 75 years since independence from Britain, but is now at its weakest since Modi gained power nationally in 2014.
The party has won just one state election since December 2018, crumbling under the onslaught of the BJP’s Hindu nationalism, the government’s generous social spending, Modi’s popularity, and its own leadership vacuum.
