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With barely three weeks to go before the crucial Assembly elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand, the opposition camp appears to be in complete disarray. Despite the claims of fighting the elections in alliance, it seems that the opposition parties are actually trying to outwit each other. In this context, the recent remark made by Rahul Gandhi, blaming other parties of involvement in a conspiracy to finish the Congress by offering difficult seats to the party, stands as a testimony. As a matter of fact, no parties in the opposition grouping are interested in sharing seats with the grand old party in Indian politics as the century-old political organisation has lost a significant amount of its popular support in recent years. The Congress seems to be in no mood to accept this reality and is still insisting on fighting in more seats than the allies, despite the fact that only the regional parties seem strong enough to take on the BJP’s camp amidst repeated failures by the party which led the country’s struggle for Independence.
In recent years, notwithstanding a far improved show in the last general election, the Congress has failed more often than not. The party failed to capture power in Haryana after a decade despite being the favourite. It failed due to its decision to contest alone despite entering into an electoral alliance with the Aam Admi Party (AAP) in the general election. As a result, despite securing an almost identical number of votes, the party could not win more seats than BJP as AAP got nearly two per cent of the valid votes. There is no gainsaying that the Congress could easily romp home if it followed the coalition dharma properly, which has become the need of the day with the party losing connection with the grass root level. It is clear that Congress needs the support of regional parties.
It’s an irony that even after reaching to a point where the party’s electoral success depends largely on the support of other like-minded parties, the Congress party seems to be in denial. It is just because of Congress’ resistance, the Maha Vikas Agadi (MVA), an alliance of three major political parties in Maharashtra, has not been able to announce its face in the state, which has clearly hampered its chances at least to some extent to defeat the BJP-led alliance. Again, by not projecting a Maratha strongman as the face of the combined opposition, MVA has already gone into back foot for which only the Congress party will be blamed. Similar is the case in Jharkhand too, where the party has refused to offer a couple of seats from its quota to the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), ensuring friendly contests in a number of seats. Such political miscalculation by the opposition parties puts BJP in an advantageous position.