Euphoria in the Opposition camp over the 2024 election results refuses to subside. There is an overwhelming sense of relief that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not invincible. And that he won’t most likely be the BJP’s face in the next election. One can’t grudge them that.
The fact, however, is that Rahul Gandhi has better reasons to celebrate the 2024 results than PM Modi’s loss. For one, the Congress has begun to at least fight with the BJP in direct contests. Its strike rate in such contests has improved to 29 per cent—from 8 per cent in 2019. In other words, the BJP’s strike rate has fallen from 92 per cent in 2019 to 71 per cent in 2024.
The BJP still has a big advantage over the Congress in direct contests,but the latter is no longer a hopeless contestant. It can hope to do much better against the BJP minus PM Modi in future.
There are several takeaways for the Congress from these results: Telangana CM Revanth Reddy justifying the party high command’s faith in him; Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan’s inability to break the Congress’ domination in Lok Sabha polls; minority voters rallying behind the Congress; the party’s revival of sorts in the Northeast; making big dents in states like Rajasthan and Karnataka, which the BJP swept in 2019; and last but not the least, vindication of sorts of Rahul Gandhi’s ‘love vs hate’ narrative during the two legs of the Bharat Jodo Yatra and also his focus on poverty, inequality, unemployment, etc.
The Congress miracle in Haryana
These are all plausible reasons to celebrate but what should give Rahul Gandhi the bragging rights is the success of his ‘Hooda gambit’ in Haryana. Let’s look at the results first. The Congress-led alliance recorded its highest vote share in Haryana—47.6 per cent as compared to 45.1 per cent in Kerala, 46.9 per cent in Tamil Nadu, 40.1 per cent in Telangana, and 43.5 per cent in Uttar Pradesh, among others. In fact, it’s the party’s biggest vote share in Haryana since 1984.
Even if the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)’s vote share in Haryana—3.94 per cent—is excluded, the Congress’ vote share stands at 43.67 per cent as against 46.11 per cent of the BJP. But let’s not discount the fact that the votes secured by the AAP, which managed to wrangle one seat in Haryana from the Congress, essentially were those of the latter. So, for all practical purposes, the Congress trumped the BJP in vote share in Haryana while the two parties retained five seats each.
The enormity of this achievement of the Congress in Haryana can be better explained by comparing it with the 2019 Lok Sabha results. The BJP then swept all 10 seats with a vote share of 58 per cent, 30 percentage points more than what the Congress got. It has to be a sort of miracle for the Congress to bridge this gap to outperform the BJP five years later. In all, the Congress got a lead in 46 out of 90 assembly constituencies. That is to say that if the assembly elections—scheduled in October—were held today, the Congress would secure a clear majority.
Haryana Lok Sabha results are a big blow to the BJP, given that PM Modi had installed his close friend, Manohar Lal Khattar, as the CM for two consecutive terms. The PM replaced him a few weeks before the elections to beat anti-incumbency but to no avail. Given that Modi always backed Khattar and has even inducted him into the Union Cabinet, this setback in Haryana must hurt him.
That must, however, please Rahul Gandhi who played what may be described as the ‘Hooda gambit’ in Haryana—that is, reposing full faith in the former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda. Though there were many staunch Hooda detractors in his close circle, like Randeep Singh Surjewala, Gandhi chose to hand over the party’s reins to Hooda, even replacing state unit chief Selja with Udai Bhan, a Hooda loyalist. Bhan became the fourth Dalit president of the Haryana Congress in 17 years- the other three being Phul Chand Mullana, Ashok Tanwar and Kumari Selja. While Tanwar and Selja didn’t get along with Hooda, Udai Bhan’s elevation ensured that the state unit worked in tandem with the ex-CM.
The way Deepender Hooda won his Rohtak seat tells the story of the Congress’ domination in Haryana in the 2024 general election. Deependerhad two years left in the Rajya Sabha but chose to contest the Lok Sabha polls. He won with a margin of 3.5 lakh votes. He secured 62.8 per cent votes in Rohtak, the highest for any constituency in the state. Incidentally, he has the distinction of securing the largest vote share among Congress candidates in Haryana for the fifth consecutive time since 2004. Behind the BJP’s decision to install Khattar as the CM in 2014 was the strategy to mobilise non-Jat voters and pit them against the Jats who were divided between Hoodas and Chautalas at that time. This strategy became ineffective in the 2024 polls. In the Rohtak parliamentary constituency, for instance, Deepender got a lead in Ahir-dominated Kosli assembly segment and also in the Rohtak Vidhan Sabha segment where Punjabis are said to be in the highest numbers in the state. According to Congress leaders, Deepender won almost all Dalit-dominated booths in the parliamentary constituency. While the Jat vs non-Jat strategy stands undone, the Hoodas’ rivals for the Jat votes—the INLD and the JJP—were decimated with the two together getting around 2.6 per cent votes only.
As it is, the BJP looks precariously placed in Haryana barely four months ahead of the assembly election.
Assam to Gujarat to Maharashtra, new fighters emerge
Why I chose to make Haryana results the centrepiece of this column is not just to underline the big political shift in favour of the Congress in a BJP-dominated state but also to drive home the point that the 2024 poll results have given the opposition party an opportunity to replicate it in other states.
Take, for instance, the case of Gaurav Gogoi, who virtually defeated Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma in Jorhat constituency. While the BJP candidate was Topon Gogoi, Sarma and his entire Cabinet camped in Jorhat for days to try to defeat Gaurav, whose entry into politics had led to the souring of Sarma’s relationship with the young Congress leader’s father and then-CM Tarun Gogoi and his eventual exit from the party. With Gaurav turning out to be more than a match for Himanta Sarma in Jorhat, Gandhi may want to hand over the Assam Congress’ reins to the young leader and project him as the party’s face in the 2026 assembly election.
The same holds true for Shashi Tharoor, who secured his fourth consecutive victory from Thiruvananthapuram in a tough, triangular contest. Tharoor’s popularity across Kerala transcends caste and religious divides and he could be the party’s best bet in the 2026 assembly election. The biggest roadblock to Tharoor, however, is KC Venugopal, an ambitious Rahul Gandhi confidant. Whether Gandhi can look beyond his coterie for the party’s larger interest in Kerala is a moot point.
Instead of celebrating PM Modi’s loss, the Congress should look to build on the gains. What’s heartening for the Congress is that the 2024 Lok Sabha results have thrown up many doughty fighters. Look at Geniben Thakor, the Congress legislator whose victory from Banaskantha in Gujarat came as a big surprise, preventing the BJP hat-trick of clean sweeps in the state. The Congress didn’t have money to fund her campaign, which forced her to go for crowdfunding— seeking Rs 111 each from her supporters and sympathisers.
The Congress has been sorely missing a fighter in Gujarat for decades. The 48-year-old leader can be an ideal fit for the job. In Maharashtra, which has seen an exodus of prominent Congress leaders, the 2024 poll results have brought forth some young winners with a remarkable fighting ability—Varsha Gaikwad, 49, newly elected MP of Mumbai North Central; Praniti Shinde, 43, new Solapur MP and daughter of former Union home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde; and, Vishal Patil, 43, grandson of former CM Vasantdada Patil, who successfully contested in Sangli seat as an Independent candidate after the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray) refused to allot the seat to the Congress.
In Sitapur Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh, Rajesh Rathore, a man not many Congress leaders are familiar with, ended up vanquishing the BJP. He got the ticket after a Samajwadi Party MLA reportedly refused to contest and the Congress’ nominee returned the party ticket. Rathore ended up winning the Sitapur Lok Sabha seat for the Congress after 35 years. Manish Tewari’s constituency was changed for the third time- from Ludhiana in 2009 to Anandpur Sahib in 2019 to Chandigarh in 2024- and he won the third time, defeating the BJP in its stronghold.
These individual winners—and there are many of them out of 99 MPs—are the best takeaway for the Congress in this election. Until recently, you could count the party’s stars on fingertips—Revanth Reddy, DK Shivakumar, Bhupesh Baghel, Sachin Pilot, and Hoodas, among a few others. The Congress is suddenly looking full of fighters who have proved their mettle by successfully vanquishing the BJP in their constituencies in different states. Unlike BJP MPs who owe their win to PM Modi and his personality cult, these Congress MPs are in a way self-made and battle-hardened. They have created an opportunity for Rahul Gandhi to start afresh and rebuild the Congress by promoting leaders who know how to fight the BJP in states. Who knows they may end up replicating Haryana-like fightback in their states. Gandhi should celebrate the 2024 poll outcome for giving him this opportunity to build New Congress, not for depriving PM Modi-led BJP of a majority in the Lok Sabha.
DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. He tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)
When our twins were born, the sweetest gift came from Vishal Patil’s father, Prakashbapu Patil – two small sacks of sugar.