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Encouraged by positive reports from Assam, Bihar, Karnataka and Punjab, the Congress is pursuing the idea of a new government that will require its support. Party veteran and Defence Minister A K Antony was the first to broach the possibility of a "secular front". Addressing a rally a few weeks ago in Kerala, he said those opposed to the Congress would have to rethink their strategy after the elections, to keep the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) out of power.
Now two more leaders - Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chauhan and Union minister Salman Khurshid -have joined the "back-the-third-front" chorus.
The new line is being pursued following inputs from key states such as Bihar and Assam that the party might not do as badly as it feared at the commencement of the election season. The focus has shifted to 194 Lok Sabha seats where elections are due in the next three phases and the party has asked its leaders and state units to go all out in the final stages.
"Earlier, hardly any senior Congress leader was seen campaigning in Bihar. Now party's state in-charge Satyavrat Chaturvedi and other leaders are campaigning extensively in constituencies where polls are due. We are also expecting more rallies by Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi in the next few days," says a Bihar Congress leader. "Only a fortnight ago, the mood in the party was that Rahul Gandhi was left alone to fight a losing battle. Other senior leaders had nearly given up, either by withdrawing from contest or refusing to campaign. Now there's a spring in the step and the party has communicated to all state units to intensify campaigning."
Congress' confidence stems from the fact that its alliance partner, Lalu Prasad-led Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), is seen to be gaining ground in areas with significant presence of Yadavs and Muslims.
"The MY (Muslim-Yadav) combination that worked well for Lalu in the past seems to working in his favour this time, too. Yadavs are not only voting themselves, they are making sure that none of potential voters for the RJD-Congress combine is left behind. Such enthusiasm among Yadavs was missing in recent elections," says Rakesh Ranjan, a faculty member at Patna University. He has closely tracked elections since 1995.
Prasad's perceived resurgence seems to helping the Congress as well in the state. "Earlier, we used to think that the Congress was in the reckoning in not more than three seats. Now we believe we have a fair chance in as many as seven seats," says the Bihar Congress leader quoted above. The party expects to win at least four seats in Bihar this time.
In Assam, according to Congress' internal assessment, the party expects to win 10 seats this time. It hopes to increase its tally in the state following perceived consolidation of Muslim votes. There are four Muslim-majority constituencies in the state and other four have Muslim population in excess of 20 per cent.
The other two states where the party expects to improve on its 2009 tally are Karnataka and Punjab. In Karnataka, as opposed to six seats it won in 2009, the party expects to win as many as 20 seats. And in Punjab, it hopes to bag 10 seats. The Congress expects to win 16 seats in Maharashtra, four in West Bengal, nine in Uttar Pradesh.
The Congress expects, rather optimistically, to win 11 seats from Andhra Pradesh. In the last elections, the party had a rich tally of 33 seats from the state. In fact, the party's better performance in Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh pushed its tally to 206 in the last elections.
According to current internal assessment, the party hopes to get in excess of 140 seats. "The target now is to cross the 150-mark with the focused campaigning in the last three phases," says the Bihar Congress leader quoted earlier, who claims to have interacted with party's top leadership recently.
That might be one reason behind the unusually aggressive campaign by top Congress leaders in the past few days.
