The Bharat Jodo Yatra may have inspired the rank and file of the Congress party and helped improve the image of its leader Rahul Gandhi, but the party’s road to the parliamentary elections in 2024 faces several challenges, say analysts and experts. is full.
The grand old party faces the uphill task of rebuilding its moribund organisation, which is struggling to overcome a leadership crisis and regain credibility with voters. It will also have to craft a political narrative that not only counters the Hindutva-driven mobilization of the ruling BJP but also delivers tangible electoral benefits.
The success of the over 4,000-km Bharat Jodo Yatra, which will conclude here on Monday, will be judged by the results of state elections leading to the 2024 national election. Should the Congress do well in these elections, the opposition regional parties may shed their reluctance to accept the Congress as the “backbone” of an anti-BJP alliance in 2024.
Political commentator Sanjay Jha, who was once the spokesperson of the Congress party, said that the real task of taking on the BJP begins now for the Congress and that the party has a clear “tailwind”.
“The cadres have been galvanised. (Congress president) Mallikarjun Kharge is giving aggressive, belligerent speeches which are going in the BJP’s favour.
He said the Congress needs to take 2023 as a semi-final knockout and a “do or die”.
This year elections are to be held in nine states Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura, Nagaland, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana. Not much is expected to go in favor of the Congress in the four north-eastern states where assembly elections will be held next month. The party has been steadily losing ground in these states and is unlikely to revive its electoral fortunes there.
In Mizoram, the Congress had suffered a crushing defeat in 2018 and was reduced to just five seats. While in Meghalaya it was defeated by the NDA; It had drawn a vacuum in Tripura and Nagaland.
But a dismal performance in the northeast could be more than offset if the party sweeps power in Karnataka, where elections are likely to be held in March-April. Most political observers give the Congress an edge over the BJP in this southern state. That said, the most important electoral test will come at the end of the year, when four other big states go to polls.
“Karnataka is trying to hold back, Congress needs to resolve the Rajasthan gridlock immediately by making Sachin Pilot the chief minister. If the Congress stops doing hara-giri, then both Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh can be won.
The party’s electoral performance in the states of Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, where the Congress is in direct competition with the BJP, “is very important for the Congress if it wants to stay relevant in 2024,” Sanjay Kumar, co-founder based in New Delhi Director of Public Policy at the Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS). In all, these four states send 93 MPs to the 543-member Lok Sabha.
A bigger challenge, however, would be “strengthening the party structure in states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, which are large and where the Congress is no longer a political force,” Kumar said. Elsewhere, in states such as Gujarat, the party structure needs to be strengthened.
“What next?” is the question the party should keep answering, Kumar told PTI.
There has been talk of several challenges for the party for a long time, one of which – regarding the leadership – has been resolved with the election of Kharge. The second was public relations and connecting with the people, on which the Bharat Jodo Yatra has been started. But it has to continue in different forms and not just as a padyatra, he said.
The Congress launched the ‘Haath Se Hath Jodo Campaign’ on 26 January as a follow-up to the yatra, under which it aims to take the message of the march to every household.
However, Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh himself has said that reaching every house will be a challenge as the Congress organization is weak in some states.
The Bharat Jodo Yatra, which covered a dozen states and two union territories from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, has created somewhat of a counternarrative, but it needs to be given a more “concrete shape” for the Congress to assume the lead. Manindra Nath Thakur, associate professor of political science at Jawaharlal Nehru University, said the opposition faction.
Thakur said, “It will be a big challenge. National Conference and the Peoples Democratic Party in Kashmir, whose leaders attended.
There are also several major opposition parties who chose to stay away. These include Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao’s Bharat Rashtra Samithi, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, a non-Congress coalition. Search continues. Non BJP Third Front
Optics at the concluding ceremony of Monday’s yatra, which is expected to be attended by several opposition leaders, will show how far the Congress has come in solidifying its ambition of becoming the “basis” of a national alternative to the BJP in 2024 .
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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)