‘Congress is seen as a party run by English speaking leaders based in Delhi.’
NEW DELHI
With the recent rout of the Congress in the Assembly elections in the Hindi belt, the grand old party has more or less been wiped out from Hindi belt, barring Himachal Pradesh (the smallest of all states) where it still has a majority government. In the recently held Assembly elections, the party failed to retain the two states of Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh and failed to defeat the incumbent BJP in Madhya Pradesh.
General Secretary of AICC for Kerala and Lakshwadeep, Tariq Anwar said to The Sunday Guardian: “We have not been wiped out, we are a strong Opposition in these states. This is not for the first time such a thing has happened. So many times we have revived in the Hindi belt and the South. For any journey of a political party, such things happen. The BJP has been wiped out from the South, they are nowhere there. Moreover, Himachal Pradesh is with Congress. The BJP may have increased their vote percentage but our percentage has not gone down. Whatever we had in 2018, the same vote share is intact with us.”
When asked if the Congress has lost its linguistic connect with the people of the Hindi heartland, Anwar added, “This is obvious, they are making the religion their agenda, they are fully dependent on it. Congress party is carrying with it all sections of society. We are fighting against a very odd situation—the religious sentiment is very difficult to face. People are mostly religious-minded. We may be in an odd situation but we are very much confident that the time will come when we will win in the Hindi belt also.”
There are ten (10) states in the Hindi heartland: Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh. Out of the ten, six are ruled by the BJP—Haryana, MP, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and UP.
An analyst said, “The huge chunk of people in the Hindi belt have the impression of Congress party being run by English speaking leaders in Delhi. If we see it from this angle, and reckon the results of the recent Assembly elections, then it would be right to say that BJP has Hindi speaking leaders at the centre and have been connecting with the people of the Hindi belt. So this has an impact on the electorate. The Congress also does not have the kind of robust election machinery the BJP has.”
BJP’s election machinery carries the narrative from the top to the bottom not only through public meetings but also through the party’s foot soldiers, who meet the people directly. A political researcher said, “Their grassroots workers are where the BJP is making an impact.
When the people of the party or members of booth committees meet people in person, it creates an affinity between the electorate and the party. The partymen who go door to door represent the party. Which also shows the smooth working of the BJP machinery.”