Anti-BJP vote not necessarily pro-Congress, writes Pramod Acharya

The Congress party in Goa was hoping for a revival of fortunes during the recently concluded assembly election. There was a hiatus period of almost a month between the polling and the results. Everybody including the BJP assumed that the Congress party would finish either a seat higher or a seat lower than the BJP. However, the results upended the estimations and projections of many pundits. Congress not only finished way below the BJP, but it also ended up getting only 11 seats against 17 seats in 2017. As an erudite friend of mine appropriately analysed, "anti-trust was much stronger than anti-incumbency."

The Congress party is encountering this precise situation across the country. Voters are not prepared to believe in the present edifice that Congress has become. The party pretends that it is ready to transform from the inside. It throws some novel designs in your face. But neither the strategies, nor the faces embodying the tactics are capable or equipped enough to win elections.

The party is laboriously criticised for failing to form government in 2017 despite becoming the single largest party. Their amplest problem then? Failure to elect Congress legislature party leader swiftly enough to beat the BJP in the race to Raj Bhavan. In 2022, Congress invariably tried persuading voters that if they win this election or even emerge as a single largest party like the previous election, the party would elect its CLP leader within five minutes. Whether in ruling or opposition, this should have held. What happened after the election convinced the voters all the more that the more Congress changes, it remains the same.

BJP took almost three weeks to decide their CM pick. Congress took one week more than the BJP to decide the leader of the Opposition. They appointed Michael Lobo as the CLP leader and Amit Patkar as the president of the Pradesh Congress Committee. Michael Lobo had joined Congress only a month before the election from the BJP while Patkar had joined the Congress only 4-5 months before the election (although he claims that he is the third generation Congressman).

Congress is touting these appointments as a generational shift in the leadership. However, the moot question remains: can this leadership win the party elections? Michael Lobo has a proven track record of winning elections. He has demonstrated his capability to influence his neighbouring constituencies. Amit Patkar lost his election with a thin margin against a BJP heavyweight like Nilesh Cabral. He gave a spirited fight but lost the election.

The problem right now with Congress is it feels winning elections is not its priority. The leadership gathers in a state with ensuing elections, tries to conduct some out-of-the-box experiments and while doing so loses the focus on the ultimate prize: power.

In Goa, despite bitter experiences of the past, the party did not declare candidates well in advance, demonstrated absolute confusion in their strongholds while distributing tickets, and espoused some holier-than-thou strategies that have no electoral relevance.

Sometimes it is difficult to analyse why Congress is doing what it is doing. When the BJP was engaged in seat-wise arithmetic having a full grasp of the anti-incumbency on the ground, Congress was busy establishing some strange chemistry with the voters hoping that something would click. It did not.

The party took an honourable decision to not induct deserters back into its fold. Most of the people appreciated it. But while doing so it also pushed away some of the winnable and staunch anti-BJP candidates like Rohan Khaunte and Aleixo Reginald. Rohan Khaunte is now tourism minister in the Pramod Sawant-led government; Reginald is now the chairman of the plump Industrial Development Corporation.

If ticket distribution of a political party is driven by factors other than winning an election, it is bound to be doomed. The then leadership of the party did not feel comfortable with Rohan. So he was pushed away. They ostracised Reginald because he joined the TMC and hoped to return. Congress denied a ticket to Reginald and bestowed a ticket to a candidate who had joined the BJP and returned. In short, it was okay for the party if a leader joins the BJP but it was a cardinal sin if a leader jumps over to the TMC. Both of these winnable anti-BJP candidates won their elections handsomely and are enjoying the seat of power in the BJP government. They should be individually thanking the Congress party.

The BJP declared their CM candidate well in advance, the AAP did it a month before the election but the Congress refused to name a CM-face despite having a very limited choice. Digambar Kamat was the lone MLA who remained with the party after a series of desertions and the party took a conscious decision to not name him as the leader reaffirming to the voters that beyond the rhetoric of new faces old Congress still rules.

This is certainly not a state-specific situation. The party has unfailingly exhibited its ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. A spokesperson of the party valiantly declared that 67% of the electorate has voted against the BJP. Another BJP spokesperson quickly reminded Congress that 77% of voters have chosen not to vote for the party. Congress should stop considering the anti-BJP vote share as a pro-Congress vote share. As several elections across the country have shown, almost 40% of the vote share is now non-Congress non-BJP. And the portion is increasing every passing election. It is Congress that is steadily contributing to this vote share while BJP's share is more or less intact. It is high time the so-called principal opposition party acknowledges this basic fact.

Many leaders of the party take satisfaction in pointing out other parties as 'vote splitters'. The leadership of the party needs to admit that in many Indian states Congress may emerge as the biggest 'voter splitter' in the next few elections to the benefit of the BJP.

(Pramod Acharya is a senior journalist and columnist and the Editor of Prudent Media, Goa. He tweets at @PramodGoa)