INDIA and a Congress-sized hole

There can be no challenge to the BJP across India without a Congress revival. The Modi party is growing — almost entirely at the cost of the Congress

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After the Lok Sabha stumble 18 months ago, the spectacular wins in Haryana, Maharashtra, Delhi and now Bihar will make Narendra Modi’s followers believe that his invincibility is back. And, India’s politics is back to being a one-horse race.

His opponents, at the same time, will think what they are doing wrong, why anti-incumbency doesn’t hurt Mr Modi or his partners, and how the INDIA bloc lost the momentum of the summer of 2024. They could begin by asking themselves some hard questions. More specifically, they should ask the Congress party, to which the devastating post-Lok Sabha slide of the Opposition is mostly owed.

There can be no challenge to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) without a Congress revival. In West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, Mamata Banerjee and M K Stalin can still keep him at bay. Kerala has its own peculiar politics, but the BJP is growing, almost entirely at the cost of the Congress. In states where the Congress piggybacks on a votebank-rich regional party, it’s a liability. Check out Uttar Pradesh with Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party in 2017, and Bihar with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in 2020 and now.

Everywhere else, a direct BJPCongress fight has been a non-contest after a heady flicker in 2024. And yet, the Congress retains just over 20 per cent votes nationally. Whether 44 seats in 2014 or 99 (with alliances) in 2024, that vote share has remained intact. One in five Indians simply votes for the Congress symbol. Let’s see it this way: In 2024, the Congress polled exactly 21.4 per cent of the vote; that was more than the aggregate vote share of the next eight parties from the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and INDIA alliances.

It’s a lot of votes to begin with. How does the party see this? There are two upshots — one leading to the other.