Will Congress front load its fight against BJP in Delhi LS polls?
party’s Delhi unit chief, was ambivalent on the question.
Equally curiously, Ajay Maken, who made way for Dikshit as president of the pradesh congress c o mmitt e e , h a s reversed his stance. A strong votary now of a pact with Kejriwal’s party, he explained his U-turn at a meeting Congress p r e s i d e n t R a h u l Ga n d h i recently convened for discussing the alliance question.
With Dikshit sticking to her position of going i t alone, a counterview has gained traction, prompting a high command-mandated outreach for direct feedback from party workers. Regardless of the results of the impromptu survey, the party will need to strike a balance between its short and long term goals.
That balancing act will have no meaning, many in the Congress believe, if the leadership fails to front load the objective of a regime change at the Centre. A BJP victory in Delhi will set back the prospects of the Congress’s revival at least by five years. Or even more if the saffron forces get a renewed term on Raisina Hill.
For instance, a Congress oldguard wondered about t he party’s prospects in the assembly polls early next year if it draws a blank and stands third, vote share-wise, in the parliamentary polls.
Given its effete organisational presence, the Congress’s claims of strengthening the party are shorthand, in fact, for increasing its vote share — not winning any of the seven LS seats at stake. The self-defeating logic brings into play another debilitating fear – that of losing more ground to AAP which, in the first instance, fattened itself on the traditional Congress vote it purloined in Delhi.
In power for over four years spread over two terms, including the earlier 49-day stint, the AAP is a shadow now of its original avant-garde self. Kejriwal knows that and had wanted to force multiply with the Congress — in Delhi and also in Goa, Haryana, Punjab and Chandigarh.
The ambitious AAP proposal was based on the assessment that a wider alliance, if it came about, could win a majority of the 33 seats in these states. In private conversations, Kejriwal placed the prospective alliances tally at 32, barring one of the two seats in Goa.
The Aap-envisioned bestc a s e s c e nari o i s r e ndered unlikely by the near impossibility of Punjab CM Amarinder Singh agreeing to a poll covenant. Only Delhi is doable. In the absence of a pact, the Congress could risk losing its residual vote to Kejriwal. For in a triangular contest, the AAP would look a better challenger to the anti-bjp voter.