Congress Faces a Hard Question After BJP’s Bengal Sweep: What Next?

Does Congress have the capacity to stop the BJP from reclaiming Karnataka and possibly winning Telangana?

Can the Opposition learn from Mamata Banerjee's Bengal debacle?

(Photo: PTI/altered by The Quint)

If the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) demolished one pillar of the INDIA bloc by routing Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal in the just concluded Assembly election, the Congress has brought the entire edifice crashing down with its decision to dump another pillar, MK Stalin’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), and ally with actor Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) to form the next government in Tamil Nadu. 

What is significant about the alliance is that the Congress announced it is not restricted to government formation alone. The two parties will fight together all forthcoming local polls in Tamil Nadu as well as the general election in 2029. 

Three years is a long time in politics. A buoyant Congress, elated by its recent victory in Kerala (while strategically ignoring its dismal performance in Assam), may have been too hasty in disclosing a significant element of its strategy to take on the BJP behemoth in 2029.

Can Congress Learn from TMC Debacle and Adapt?

The Congress must cross two crucial hurdles in the run-up to 2029 before it can even hope to position itself as the BJP’s main challenger. These are the Assembly polls coming up in Karnataka and Telangana in 2028. Let’s not even talk about the other states, particularly the northern ones where the party has almost withered away. 

In both these southern states, the Congress will be defending its governments. More importantly, both have significant Muslim populations. 

The saffron surge in West Bengal conclusively proves that Hindu consolidation is a potential winner beyond the Hindi belt, even in states with strong regional and cultural identities.

If Mamata Banerjee, with her canny political sense, a vast network on the ground, and the solid support of women and Muslim voters could be swept away by a Hindu wave, does the Congress, which lacks all three (except the Muslim vote), have the capacity to stop the BJP from reclaiming Karnataka and possibly winning Telangana where it has already made inroads? 

This question becomes relevant in the context of the cunning strategy the BJP crafted to storm the West Bengal fortress.

It was a potent cocktail of several ingredients: a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise of voter rolls compressed into five months, which deleted voters in targeted areas, a sustained campaign against infiltrators (read Muslims) and militarising the state by posting half the country’s strength of paramilitary forces for the duration of the election. 

Add to these a strong anti-incumbency sentiment against the TMC and the BJP achieved what was long considered impossible. It swept West Bengal and did it without promoting a true-blue Bengali leader to counter Mamata Banerjee’s personality cult.   

The most stunning aspect of its victory was the extent of majoritarian polarisation the BJP managed. Its 46 percent vote share came entirely from the Hindu community, Scheduled Castes, and Scheduled Tribes. The significance of this huge consolidation of Hindu votes is that it happened without the BJP resorting to its usual tactics of dividing the Muslim vote, as it has done in the past in states like UP and Bihar. 

Mamata Banerjee’s 41 percent vote share suggests that the state’s 30 percent Muslims voted wholesale in her favour, along with sections of her loyal women voters. 

Should the BJP take the West Bengal model to Karnataka and Telangana in 2028, it’s anyone’s guess what the poll outcome could be. Karnataka has a population of around 14 percent Muslims while Telangana’s minorities add up to a little over 12 percent. 

Between Grassroots and 'High Command'

India is such a diverse country that it is dangerous to draw exact parallels. However, the BJP’s stunning victory in West Bengal suggests that Hindu consolidation is a project in progress. 

Does Rahul Gandhi have a brain trust to stem the tide? So far, the Congress has sought to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds. It swings between soft Hindutva and secularism. It has made caste census a centerpiece of its narrative but remains wedded to dynastic politics and the coterie culture it breeds. Its narrative tends to be negative (anti-Modi) rather than positive. And most of the time, it sounds like the ancien regime, despite a generational shift in leadership. 

The SIR process is on currently in all the states where elections will be held over the next three years. Except for Mamata Banerjee, none of the Opposition parties including the Congress seem to have fathomed the potency of this tool. 

It remains the subject of intense debate whether SIR would have altered the outcome in Bengal. However, it clearly reshaped the electoral landscape and most certainly created confusion.

The Spectre of SIR

While in West Bengal, Muslim areas were the worst hit by SIR deletions, the Election Commission’s exercise seems to have impacted Tamil Nadu as well. According to the renowned poll data analyst Giles Vernier, formerly with Ashoka University, around 50 percent of the deletions in the state were in just eight districts in the DMK’s strongholds. 

Mamata Banerjee fought a lonely battle against the BJP’s election model for West Bengal. Neither the DMK nor the Congress nor the Samajwadi Party (whose UP is up for elections early next year) strengthened her hands by joining the fight. 

It’s only now, after the BJP’s spectacular success in West Bengal, that the Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav has gone running to Kolkata to make common cause with Mamata Banerjee. It’s too late because her citadel has fallen and the SIR process in UP is over with more than 3 crore deletions. 

There is still time for the Congress in Karnataka and Telangana. But only if it understands the nature of the challenge it faces. This is critical because it will also have to fight anti-incumbency like Mamata Banerjee. If the BJP reclaims Karnataka and manages to snatch Telangana away from the Congress, democracy as we know it could well become vipaksh mukt (Opposition free).

(Arati R Jerath is a Delhi-based senior journalist. She tweets @AratiJ. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)