TUESDAY, JULY 01, 2025
On Upcoming State Elections: Congress’ Big Brother Attitude Problem
Published on Jun 9, 2025
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- The best possible way to outwit political opponents is to establish a narrative that people can easily relate to. While the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has effectively done so, the opposition parties have collectively failed, since the rise of the saffron brigade to power. As a result, the ruling party’s juggernaut appears to be unstoppable, as they keep winning one election and after another, forcing the opposition to surrender meekly even in their own citadel. If the opposition parties genuinely want to prevent the BJP from winning, they must come up with a new narrative immediately to corner their political opponents, especially with states like Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Assam and West Bengal heading to the polls soon.
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- Among the states going to polls later this year or early next year, only Assam appears firmly aligned with the BJP, while retaining power in Bihar will be a significant challenge. Additionally, the BJP faces an uphill task to unsettle the regional parties from power in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. It is noteworthy that despite various challenges ahead of the state elections, the BJP has already launched campaigns in all the poll-bound states with leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and several other senior party leaders addressing public meetings. But no such effort is seen from the opposition camp. With elections knocking at the door, the opposition parties are yet to finalise an alliance in Bihar, where a defeat would be particularly damaging for the BJP. Despite a couple of meetings between the Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), a major force in state politics, no announcements have been made regarding their strategy for the upcoming elections, leaving ample opportunity for the BJP to sway the electorate.
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- What is necessary is to take decisive action with a focus on winning. Recently, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi alleged collusion between the Election Commission (EC) and the government during the Maharashtra elections. But the fact remains that the opposition alliance suffered a significant defeat in the election due to its failure to project a chief ministerial face. While the people of Maharashtra seemed to be interested in seeing Uddhav Thackeray as their Chief Minister, the Congress put a condition that the top post would be chosen from the party that win the most seats in the elections. The “big brother” attitude of the Congress didn’t go down well with the electorate and that subsequently led to the downfall of the opposition alliance. Thus, Rahul Gandhi’s allegation appears more as an attempt to hide the party’s failure in Maharashtra than a genuine effort to bring out the truth, particularly after the Centre neutralised its main strategy for the Bihar elections by deciding to conduct a caste census. The Congress should shed its “big brother” attitude to get back to winning ways.
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Nagaland Districts
