What the Congress needs to really focus on is the rebuilding of the grassroots base in the major states where it has faded into electoral irrelevance.
It has been an entertaining few days in the Parliament when it was convened for the first time after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Buoyed by a significant decline in the BJP/NDA seat tally and its own surprisingly good show at the hustings (the Congress almost managed to touch the 100-seat tally), the I.N.D.I Alliance leaders were preening and all set for a joust. Depending on which side of the fence you belong to, inspiring or childish scenes were enacted while the newly elected MPs were taking oath. After spending 20 years in active electoral politics, Rahul Gandhi finally took up the challenge of a constitutional post by becoming the Leader of Opposition.
It is impossible to speculate what is going on in the minds of senior I.N.D.I Alliance leaders. But the behaviour of the MPs in both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha has made it crystal clear that the next few years will see tumultuous and turbulent scenes in the Parliament.
Even when the Congress was reduced to a pathetic 44 seats in the 2014 elections, its ability to generate noise was never dimmed. Since public memory is short, most have forgotten how Prime Minister Narendra Modi was compelled to go back on land reforms.
Most have forgotten how Parliament was completely disrupted due to the suicide of a student, Rohit Vemula, in Hyderabad. In any case, the Congress has every right to oppose the government and the ruling party tooth and nail. It will be up to the Indian voter, and not the political commentators, to finally decide the quality of the Opposition performance when Lok Sabha elections come calling again in 2029.
But the posturing, mannerisms and words of Congress leaders indicate that the party has two sets of leaders. One set thinks that this Modi government can collapse any time and hence relentless pressure must be intensified. The other set thinks while the government may not fall, relentless attacks will make it a lame duck well before 2029, just as UPA-2 had become much before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. It will then be relatively easy to dethrone a tired and discredited Modi government and storm back to power. As everyone says, anything is possible in politics.
Yet, the authors have been elaborating on one theme since late 2022: for the Opposition to be able to form a stable and meaningful government at the Centre, the Congress on its own needs to cross at least the 150-seat mark in the Lok Sabha and reduce the BJP to a similar number. A few weeks ago, soon after the election results came, the authors had taken a “contrarian” stand in this paper and warned that the Congress performance might turn out to be a false dawn for the party. In this column, we try to elaborate the dangers of a false dawn in a more elaborate way. When you look at the numbers dispassionately, it becomes clear that unless the Congress dramatically strengthens its grassroots base and organisational structure in key states, it has no hope of going ahead of the BJP tally in Lok Sabha elections. It’s possible it might form a government like it did in 2004. But the difference will be, the BJP numbers will still be larger.
Start with Uttar Pradesh. A very generous Akhilesh Yadav will give at best 20 seats to the Congress in 2029. A 50% strike rate will mean 10 seats. In Bihar and Jharkhand, allies RJD and JMM together will give at best 12 seats to the Congress. A 50% strike rate means 6 seats. In Maharashtra, alliance partners will at best give 25 seats to the Congress. A 50% strike rate means 12 to 13 seats. In Tamil Nadu, the DMK will at best give 8 or 9 seats to the Congress. A near 100% strike rate means 8 to 9 seats. Together these states account for 221 Lok Sabha seats. A good performance by the Congress will mean it wins 38 of these seats. Now look at West Bengal, Odisha and Assam with 77 seats. An excellent performance by the Congress (given its current grassroots strength) will enable it to win about 8 seats. That means, the Congress would win about 46 of the 292 Lok Sabha seats.
Add about 15 from Kerala, 6 from Haryana, 8 from Punjab and about 5 from Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi. That takes the Congress tally to 80 out of 351 seats.
Add about 10 seats from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. That takes the Congress tally to 90 seats. Let’s say the party wins about 6 seats from the Northeast, J&K, Ladakh, Goa, Pondicherry, Andamans and Lakshadweep. That takes the Congress to 96 out of 417 seats. The Congress performance in the 2024 elections has been approximately on the same lines. But that is when it will need to confront the elephant in the room.
The Congress and the BJP will be in direct contests in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Gujarat and Rajasthan. Together, these states send 119 members to the Lok Sabha. In the 2024 elections, a “resurgent” Congress has won 19 of the 119 seats. If the Congress has to overtake the BJP in the numbers game in the 2029 Lok Sabha elections, it has to win at least 60 out of these 119 seats. In effect, it will have to almost decimate the BJP dominance in these states. Do note that the authors have already given hypothetically generous numbers to the party in Haryana, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, and the Northeast. Now, enthusiastic supporters and sympathisers will insist that this is possible. They will keep going back to the 2004 template.
Yet, as the 2024 results revealed, a repeat of the 2004 scenario looks highly improbable. Despite suffering significant setbacks in Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Haryana, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, the BJP still managed to win 240 seats, more than the combined I.N.D.I Alliance tally of 232. What the Congress needs to really focus on is the rebuilding of the grassroots base in the major states where it has faded into electoral irrelevance. That needs painstaking, hard work, which may not make it to the headlines. A vociferous and intense opposition to the BJP is good for optics. It will make the right kind of headlines. It will energise the core vote base. But headlines will not win elections.
Yashwant Deshmukh is Founder & Editor in Chief of CVoter Foundation and Sutanu Guru is Executive Director.