Mumbai: The Congress appears to have given up the fight in Maharashtra elections, with party candidates running a low-key door-to-door campaign and reluctant to spend their resources on Rahul Gandhi’s rallies in their constituencies.
Mumbai skyline is dotted with hoardings and billboards featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and also, separately, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray and even his late father Bal Thackeray.
But the Congress is nowhere to be seen. It is no different in Pune or Nagpur or the Konkan region. They are hardly seen in TV or newspaper advertisements either.
The party has 147 candidates in the poll fray. Most of them have been trying to reach out to voters through door-to-door campaigning, instead of organising mega rallies of big leaders.
With no direction from the central leadership, which many in the party believe has grown “indifferent” to the party’s fate in the elections, senior leaders such as former chief ministers Prithviraj Chavan and Ashok Chavan have also confined themselves mostly to their own constituencies.
“Every candidate has been left to fend for himself or herself,” remarked a Congress leader sitting in Mumbai office Monday.
Also read: Congress’ new headache ahead of Maharashtra polls — no senior wants to fight Fadnavis
Only 5 rallies by Rahul, none by Sonia
Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi who was once a much sought after campaigner has addressed five public meetings in Maharashtra, while AICC chief Sonia Gandhi has completely stayed away from the poll campaign.
Maharashtra elections have exposed what is already an open secret in political circles — that Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi aren’t wanted by even Congress candidates. “There was no point in inviting Sonia or Rahul Gandhi. I don’t have the money to organise their rallies. Their rallies are not going to make any difference to voters,” a Congress candidate in Western Maharashtra told ThePrint.
Other star campaigners weren’t in great demand either. Some candidates, however, preferred them as they were “not under compulsion” to “make it a success” in terms of attendance — something they must do if it involves the Nehru-Gandhi family.
Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, his Rajasthan counterpart Ashok Gehlot, and his deputy Sachin Pilot were some of the Congress leaders who addressed a few gatherings in Maharashtra.
Four of Bhupesh Baghel’s scheduled rallies were cancelled as the candidates expressed their inability to organise them for dearth of money, a senior Congress functionary told ThePrint in Nagpur.
Prithviraj Chavan wanted Jyotiraditya Scindia to campaign in his constituency as Scindias who came from Satara were expected to get some traction here. Jyotiraditya Scindia, however, refused as he wanted to come and leave the same day while Chavan wanted him to address the rally in the evening, a Congress functionary involved in the former CM’s election management told ThePrint.
“There is no funding coming from the party to candidates. They have to dip into their own funds or resort to crowdfunding, and donations from party workers and individuals,” said the Congress functionary from Nagpur.
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Ally NCP does its bit
Sachin Sawant, the Maharashtra Congress spokesperson, conceded that the party’s campaign was ‘crippled’ by the lack of resources this election. “You just cannot have a fair match with the BJP, the party that accounted for nearly half the total expenditure in the Lok Sabha election. The opposition just doesn’t have the resources. Our fight is mainly at every assembly level.”
He blamed the introduction of electoral bonds for the party’s plight: “The government knows exactly who is donating to whom. So, people are scared of helping the opposition.”
With the Congress losing the will to fight, it seems to have outsourced this job to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) that is leading the opposition’s charge, mostly in its stronghold of Western Maharashtra, against the ruling alliance.
(With inputs from Manasi Phadke in Mumbai and Neelam Pandey in Nagpur)
But what is clearly open to all is not visible to Raga who still thinks that elections are only about inventing Modi ridicule like ‘Pickpocket’ and ‘Bechendra Modi’.