NEW DELHI: The party has started with the preparations for the Delhi Assembly elections, which it will contest solo after parting with the AAP.
After their third consecutive defeat in the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress party has started with the preparations for the Assembly elections in Delhi, scheduled for next year. The grand old party, which enjoyed power for a decade in Union territory, was defeated by the Aam Aadmi Party.
Back in 2013, they supported the AAP government, which fell short of the majority mark in the 70-member Assembly, but the government was short-lived and went on to contest fresh elections. In those elections, the BJP emerged as the largest party with 31 seats, but AAP, with support from Congress’s eight representatives, formed the government, and Arvind Kejriwal was sworn in as Chief Minister. He resigned on February 14, 2014, after failing to pass the Jan Lokpal Bill due to opposition from both, the Congress and the BJP. Kejriwal claimed that both parties were obstructed the bill to protect their vested interests. In the subsequent elections in 2015 and 2020, the party drew a blank.
However, its hopes were revived after the improved performance in the 2019 general elections, in which it could not win any seats but was the runner-up on many of them, it scored 22 percent approximately, but that too was short-lived as in the Assembly elections in 2020, its vote share again came down to 4.3 percent and it did not win any seats.
For the upcoming Assembly election, which are scheduled to be held in February or before, the party has started gearing up. Every week, the party holds meetings with its workers. It has asked block presidents to hold meetings on the second day of every month and district presidents to hold meetings every fifth day of the month, so the workers can address issues concerning the party.
Also, Delhi Congress interim president Devender Yadav has directed the workers to make people aware of the inaction and incompetence of the BJP and AAP governments in the past 10 years to serve their interests, as these parties were missing from action when people faced acute water shortages, deaths due to the heatwave, and a lack of preparedness to meet the challenges in the season of monsoon. Additionally, he directed Congress workers to regularly interact with people in the Jhuggi-Jhopri (JJ) clusters, unauthorised and resettlement colonies, and other residential areas to understand their problems, which should be brought to the attention of the concerned authorities to solve them. Also, the party is working to bring back several grass-roots workers in its fold, who had left the party.
In the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections, the party gained 18.9 percent of the of the votes on the three parliamentary seats contested, which is less than what it got in the 2019 general elections, but the majority seats were contested by the AAP as a member of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc. Now, AAP and Congress have parted ways and will go solo in the Assembly elections.
According to some political experts, AAP and Congress have a similar vote bank, and AAP’s free schemes make it one-sided during the Assembly elections and restrict Congress from winning any seat. At the national level, both the BJP and Congress are rival parties, while in Delhi, AAP is Congress’s main rival due to the shift of its core vote bank in favour of the ruling party. Congress has constantly pointed out to AAP over its management of issues concerning the citizens.
Yadav, at one of his meetings in Adarsh Nagar constituency, said, “It brings immense pride to Congress workers that the party’s vote share has risen in the recent Lok Sabha elections, signalling a renewed trust from the public for the party to deliver effective governance in Delhi. The city experienced remarkable development during Congress’s tenure. Currently, residents face significant challenges in accessing clean drinking water, endure frequent power outages, and contend with issues like waterlogging and severe degree of air and water pollution.”