Hark, Congressmen! If you plan to celebrate the defeat in the Gujarat assembly election with some statistics and cozy interpretations (BJP 99 and Cong 77*), you know not what you have lost. Gujarat election 2017 was the golden opportunity for the 'improved Congress' under the leadership of young Rahul Gandhi to change the end-result of a decades-old experiment-in-progress in India's Hindutva laboratory. And the Grand Old Party squandered away the chance without achieving anything substantial, thus giving its rival BJP an upper hand in the coming Lok Sabha elections in 2019.
The saffron party will be a relieved and rejuvenated brigade in the 2019 ballot battle for Parliament as it knows that the Congress with Rahul at the helm could not do much against the weakest BJP in 2017.
What Congressmen fail to understand is if they could not wrest Gujarat in 2017, the land of Mahatma is likely to remain a distant dream for them for years to come.
In fact, everything was in favor of Congress this election and the BJP was facing some real trouble in its mega star prime minister Narendra Modi's home turf.
Twenty-two years of anti-incumbency is not an easy task for any party to tide over in any ballot battle in India. Much to its chagrin, BJP's two chief ministers in Gujarat after Narendra Modi – Anandiben Patel and Vijay Rupani – were not able to live up to the expectations of Gujaratis. Both of them also had the uphill task of matching the performance of the party's super star Modi, who brought Narmada waters to a parched Gujarat and built roads and other infrastructure with lightning speed during his tenure.
Still, the Congress failed to cash in on this and convert the people's anger against the ruling party into votes. Gujaratis, with a large number of them being businessmen, were not very happy with the way the Centre rolled out the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regimen and the plight of farmers under the NDA rule was no better in the state. The GST-effect was visible in the business community-dominated Saurashtra, where the Congress reaped some dividend.
Still, the Congress was unsuccessful in scoring the winning goal into a goalpost with a weak keeper.
It seems, the Congress's move to rope in Patidar leader Hardik Patel did not deliver the desired result.
In fact, the 2017 formula of KHAMP (Kshatriya-Harijan-Adivasi-Muslim-Patel) may have upset the traditional time-tested vote bank of Congress's KHAM (Kshatriya-Harijan-Adivasi-Muslim) in a reverse vote consolidation. On hindsight, Hardik's entry into the fold may not have been a welcome step for the KHAM voters. That may be the reason for the opposition party's poor show in North Gujarat where Hardik Patel claims to wield some clout.
Again, Congress should be the last party to call Modi names. Because it knows what happened in 2007 after its leader Sonia Gandhi called Modi 'Maut ka Saudagar.' However, Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar forgot this lesson and took a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi calling him a 'Neech aadmi.' The saffron brigade was quick to latch on to this and make use of it in election rallies.
With Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh under its belt now, the BJP will not have any hesitation in going full throttle for its original agenda of Uniform Civil Code and Ram temple at Ayodhya after the 2019 polls and the Congress will have to look for new strategies to stop the juggernaut. The Gujarat election result is nothing to cheer for the Congress but to rue over lost chance.
(*Election Commission has not announced final results in several constituencies till filing of this report)
Read: Assembly elections | Not Rahul, blame me for party's defeat: Virbhadra after Himachal debacle