No shake up in Cong post Gujarat polls

No heads will roll in Congress in the aftermath of its Gujarat performance - for no matter what the party might have said publicly, internally, there was little or no hope that it would improve its performance to the extent that it could form a government in Gujarat.

The party got a little hopeful as it entered the campaign phase. The best estimate of the party was 80 seats out of 182 in the assembly. Privately, party managers admitted that the central leadership never expected to do better than this because of the prevailing ground situations.

According to top sources in the party, the first comprehensive assessment was done in October - two months before the assembly elections. The survey showed Congress was in a jam.

According to a party leader involved in Gujarat electoral preparations: "The survey showed that Modi would sweep the elections again and the Congress would get 30-35 seats."

At this stage, the party brass decided to have a realistic target: attempt to retain at least the seats it had in the last assembly. The brief to the local party organisation was that the party should be able to retain its tally of 51 seats.

After the campaign started in November, another internal assessment of the party showed that the situation had changed in the favour of Congress. Congress president Sonia Gandhi's rallies evoked huge response, which boosted the morale of the party. On the basis of internal assessments and media reports, Congress thought it could improve its tally to 75-80 seats.

The assesment also took into account the 'Patel factor' because of Keshubhai Patel's rebellion against Narendra Modi. According to a top manager, "the party pinned its hopes on the Saurashtra region expecting a shift in the Patel vote bank towards Congress." This did not happen, and though Congress improved its performance both in terms of seat and vote share, it could not  come up to Sonia Gandhi's expectations.

Learning several lessons from the loss in Gujarat, an influential section in the party feels that renewed emphasis should be given to the fight against communalism (which has become a sustaining factor in the elections).

According to a top-ranking leader of the party, "After the Ram Mandir movement, BJP has consistently maintained a leading  position in electoral terms. They never got politically marginalised even when after they went  out of power. We have to build a broad-based alliance, secular and democratic in nature, to fight against this communal force."

CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat today hit out at Congress for not properly combatting the communal agenda of BJP. "The results underline the necessity for an uncompromising struggle against the Hindutva variety of communalism.  Congress has shirked from doing so. On the contrary, the predominant attitude has been to avoid raising anti-communal issues on the plea that it will help BJP to polarise people. This is a short-sighted and harmful approach," Karat said.

Although CPI(M)'s own candidate, following the party's roadmap in Bhavnagar lost the battle by a huge margin, Karat took digs at the Congress leadership. "Some of the speeches of Sonia Gandhi were an exception, and this only points to the absence of a firm anti-communal thrust in the campaign. The unwillingness to take up this struggle was reflected in the hesitancy and refusal of the UPA government to boldly pursue legal and constitutional avenues to bring those responsible for the 2002 carnage to justice," he said.

In his prescription, Karat has asked non-BJP forces to take up "immediate problems of the people affected by the unabashed right-wing economic policies of the Modi government."

According to him, "the fight can be waged effectively only if the reactionary class policies are fought and people's interests defended. This requires the mobilisation of the working people through struggles."