‘You can’t win every poll on polarisation’

The Congress has done better in the Haryana and Maharashtra assembly polls than what political observers and exit polls predicted. K C Venugopal, the party’s general secretary, spoke to Amrita Madhukalya about the election results. Edited excerpts:

What worked for the opposition in Haryana?

Misgovernance of the governments at the Centre and Haryana . ... they [the Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP] uses the forces for election campaigns. They only talk about [the effective revocation of Constitution’s Article] 370 [that gave Jammu and Kashmir a special status], and do not talk about the farmer distress or unemployment. They only take the polarisation line. You cannot win every election with polarisation. Maybe once you can. This is a clear lesson. Unfortunately, the entire media wrote us off; some gave us three seats in exit polls in

Haryana.

There is a clear lesson here for the rebels like Alpesh Thakor [who lost a by-poll on a BJP ticket in Gujarat after quitting the Congress]. The party [Congress] gave him [Thakor] everything it could. He got votes on an anti-bjp plank and then went and joined the BJP. This type of horsetrading does not help in the long run. In Haryana and Maharashtra, they [BJP] took a lot of Congress as well as NCP MLAS [members of legislative assembly] ...

Do you believe the Congress has a chance of forming the government in Haryana and are you in talks with the prospective allies?

We are waiting for the final tally before we take any step, or start any talks. The numbers have been changing constantly.

How would you react to those who say the Congress could have won the elections had the leadership change in Haryana happened earlier?

I do not want to answer hypothetical questions.

Is it true that the Congress might reach out to the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra to form a government with the party diametrically opposite to you ideologically?

We will have to stick to the party’s ideological stand. How can we compromise with it?

Are you ruling out the Congress reaching out to the Sena?

No, I am not ruling it out. We are waiting for a final tally in Maharashtra, too.