Ahead of Maharashtra polls, Congress has given up, but Sharad Pawar’s NCP still fighting
Opinion

Ahead of Maharashtra polls, Congress has given up, but Sharad Pawar’s NCP still fighting

The Congress does not have a strong leader who can be the face of the party. And its leaders look hopeless in Maharashtra.

File photo of Sharad Pawar | Twitter/@PawarSpeaks

Four months after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress-led opposition is still struggling to recover from its dreadful performance. The Congress should have been introspective and analysed the reason for its terrible defeat, but it still looks clueless.

The Congress does not have a strong leader who can be the face of the party. Its leaders look hopeless in Maharashtra as well. It doesn’t have a solid organisation and is outdated. It seems that the Congress does not have any motivation and is at a standstill in the state.

With assembly elections due in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand, the BJP has started campaigning in full force, whereas the opposition still does not know what has to be done.

The mainstream media seems sold on the idea of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah ruling India for a long time.

There is no strong opposition left to question the Modi government, but it still can be done if the Congress gets its act together.


Also read: Silent resentment in Shiv Sena as BJP won’t settle for smaller share of seats anymore


Ahead of the assembly elections, the opposition can question the government on the economic slowdown, unemployment and rural distress. Some opposition leaders have been questioning the government, but it has not garnered media attention. Instead
mainstream media has been focusing on which leader is quitting the Congress and
the NCP and joining either the BJP or the Shiv Sena. Ahead of three state polls, prominent leaders like Udayanraje Bhosale and Ganesh Naik quitting the NCP to join the BJP is a setback for the NCP. For the Congress, prominent leaders like Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil and former Mumbai Congress chief  Kripashankar Singh quitting the party is bad news.

Senior Congress leaders are inactive and seem to have either lost interest or given up. As far as the NCP is concerned, it is still very much active under Sharad Pawar’s leadership, and prepping for the assembly
elections.


Also read: If BJP wins Maharashtra, Haryana, Modi can’t take credit for all conquests anymore


Sharad Pawar held a rally in Satara and received a great response, and is now on a Maharashtra tour. So, the NCP is competing with BJP-Shiv Sena with a strong face.
But it seems that all its efforts will be wasted in front of the Modi wave.

The BJP has mastered the skill of diverting people’s attention from primary issues
like economy, unemployment and farm crisis to secondary topics
like Article 370, in the name of “desh ke liye kar rahe hai (doing it for the nation)”.

The main point is not which party is doing what for a better public image, but
that it’s up to the voters who they elect. And guess what, the voters are getting influenced by the media strategies of the BJP and the so-called Modi wave. Indians are voting based on the face value of a party rather than its work.

Nikita Pawar is the winner of the opinion writing contest on the second edition of Democracy Wall, Season 2. This was in response to the question asked by ThePrint: With three state polls due soon, is the opposition looking increasingly clueless in front of Modi-Shah’s BJP?

Democracy Wall is a monthly free speech campus initiative organised by ThePrint in collaboration with Facebook.