Bypolls results: Why it's no good news for Congress and INDIA Bloc

Of the five assembly bypolls across four states for which results were announced on Monday (June 23), the BJP could bag only the lone seat of Kadi in its saffron bastion of Gujarat. From the remaining four, one each went to the Congress party (Nilambur in Kerala) and the Trinamool Congress (Kaliganj, Bengal) and two to the Aam Aadmi Party (Gujarat’s Visavadar and Punjab’s Ludhiana West).

While the numbers may somewhat suggest a humbling of the BJP, be it Punjab in the north and Kerala in the south or Gujarat in the west and Bengal in the east, it is the Congress that has come out most bruised. The results are also a stark reminder of how far the Opposition’s INDIA bloc has fallen from its avowed goal of a collective fight against the BJP - the alliance’s constituents determined now instead to fight amongst themselves.

For the Congress, at least four of the five bypolls were crucial for one reason or another.

Nilambur win morale booster for Congress

In Kerala, where it bagged the Nilambur seat – not an insignificant triumph by any measure – the victory is a major morale booster ahead of next year’s assembly election in which the Congress-led UDF hopes to reclaim power from the ruling Left coalition, otherwise part of the INDIA bloc at the national level, after a decade-long hiatus.

That the BJP, despite all its efforts to expand its footprint in the southern state, finished a very distant fourth with its candidate Mohan George polling just 8,648 votes, may be a matter of relief to both the Congress and the Left parties.

Also Read: What Aryadan Shoukath's Nilambur bypoll win means for UDF

Yet, what should concern the Grand Old Party in terms of political narrative both within and beyond Kerala is the eagerness with which its difficult INDIA partner, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, entered the Nilambur poll fray riding on PV Anvar.

As a non-entity in Kerala politics, the Trinamool Congress cannot claim credit for the 19,760 votes that Anvar bagged as an independent candidate in the bypoll, ostensibly eating into the LDF’s votes and aiding the victory of Congress’s Aryadan Shoukath. As a former MLA of two terms from Nilambur, Anvar, undoubtedly, ratcheted up these votes through his own efforts. But the Trinamool’s endorsement for him should sting the Congress, nonetheless, considering how Trinamool leaders have repeatedly challenged the Congress’s assumed centrality to the INDIA bloc.

AAP’s revenge

An even bigger slight for the Congress has come from Punjab and Gujarat at the hands of former INDIA ally AAP. Having burnt its always-wobbly bridge with Arvind Kejriwal’s party earlier this year, when it decided to contest all 70 seats in the Delhi assembly election, the Congress has now been repaid in full by the AAP for what Kejriwal and his colleagues have repeatedly called a “betrayal”.

If the Congress contributed to the AAP’s defeat in over two dozen of Delhi’s seats, including those from which Kejriwal and his aide Manish Sisodia were seeking re-election, the AAP has exacted revenge now by relegating the Congress to a distant third spot in Gujarat’s Visavadar and the second spot in Punjab’s Ludhiana West.

Also Read: Kejriwal on AAP's bypoll wins: 'Semi-final to 2027'

The Congress had tried to prop up the Ludhiana West bypoll as a referendum against the Bhagwant Mann-led AAP government in Punjab; alleging ad nauseam that the chief minister had surrendered the state, its resources, and its honour to Kejriwal and his “coterie from Delhi”.

Ironically, the Congress’s offensive against the AAP sounded exactly the same as those being pushed by the BJP and the Akali Dal. The Congress, Akalis, and the BJP also asserted repeatedly that a victory for AAP’s Sanjeev Arora, presently a Rajya Sabha MP, would pave the way for Kejriwal’s elevation to Parliament’s Upper House as a representative from Punjab in Arora’s stead thereby denying the berth, yet again, to some other “son of the soil”.

3-way split in anti-AAP votes

However, as the results came in, it was clear that the three-way split of anti-AAP votes between the Congress’s Bharat Bhushan Ashu (25,542 votes), the BJP’s Jiwan Gupta (20,323 votes) and the Akali Dal’s Parupkar Ghuman (8,203 votes), propelled Sanjeev Arora to victory in his debut election. The votes polled by Ashu, Gupta, and Ghuman may collectively be nearly 18,000 more than Arora’s 35,179 votes, but the AAP’s industrialist-cum-politician ended up winning the seat with a wider margin than the 7,512 vote lead that the AAP’s late Gurpreet Gogi had defeated Congress’s Ashu by in February 2022.

Also Read: Visavadar bypoll result: AAP’s Gopal Italia wins in Gujarat

The Congress Ludhiana West debacle must also force the party’s central leadership to take stock afresh of the floundering public outreach and organisational deficiencies that have plagued the party in Punjab. The bypoll campaign, party insiders had been complaining, was largely left to be mounted by Ashu and former CM Charanjit Channi, while Congress’s MP from Ludhiana and state party chief Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, a close aide of Rahul Gandhi, was missing for most part, as were Leader of Opposition Partap Singh Bajwa and other senior leaders.

AAP chewing into Congress’s vote base

The AAP’s Ludhiana West win is expected to help chief minister Mann gloss over the many lapses in his governance, at least for a time, and is likely to make him more belligerent in his engagement with the Congress’s Punjab unit. More significantly, coupled with AAP candidate Gopal Italia’s spectacular win in the Visavadar bypoll in Gujarat, where the Congress’s Nitin Ranpariya couldn’t even muster enough votes to save his deposit, the AAP’s bypoll performance will make Kejriwal cold to any future dalliance with a Congress-driven INDIA bloc.

Also Read: Congress says it is open to alliance in UP, but focused on rebuilding ground strength

The AAP chief would rather prefer his party chewing into the Grand Old Party’s vote base in Punjab, Gujarat, and elsewhere while falling back on his earlier assertion of the AAP being better placed than the Congress to take on the BJP in these states – and, of course, in Delhi.

Double whammy for Rahul

The Congress’s pathetic show in the two bypoll-bound seats of Gujarat is also a double whammy for Rahul Gandhi. Not only has the party lost the Kadi and Visavadar bypolls but it has done so within months of Rahul launching his party’s ambitious revival roadmap for Gujarat and bombastically asserting that the Congress, which has been in opposition in the state for three decades, will “defeat the BJP” in Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah’s home state in the 2027 assembly polls.

Also Read: As Modi 3.0 turns one, growing discord, flailing unity erode INDIA bloc

That the Congress lost the bypoll for Kadi, a seat reserved for Scheduled Castes, by nearly 40,000 votes despite Rahul’s strident Dalit/OBC outreach should also irk the party and its high command.

Mamata still the boss in Bengal

Lastly, the Congress may have been spurned by Mamata in Bengal for its unrealistic electoral ambitions in the state, unwillingness to disengage with the Left Front, and reluctance to project her as the fulcrum of the INDIA bloc. Yet, the Kaliganj bypoll result shows that Mamata is still the boss in Bengal and would, arguably, even be more comfortable with having the BJP as its principal rival in the state than having the Congress as a friend and ally.