Even after 11 years, three Lok Sabha elections and two assembly polls, the Congress failed to win a single seat in the Delhi assembly election earlier this month. While this was not entirely unexpected, despite strong anti-incumbency against the AAP, the Congress party’s inability to shake off its image as an electoral non-starter in the fight for power in India’s capital comes as a big surprise.

The grand old party’s failure to position itself as a viable alternative to the BJP at the national level and regional parties in state elections makes the Congress a weak political force that has remained stuck in a cycle of constant survival struggle.

It is another matter that the BJP’s emphatic victory over the AAP in Delhi brought cheer to the Congress, which holds the latter primarily responsible for its electoral slide in the national capital as well as nationally due to a sustained anti-corruption campaign by AAP’s supremo Arvind Kejriwal against the Congress-led UPA government.

Apart from AAP, the other big beneficiary of the anti-corruption movement has been prime minister Narendra Modi and his party. Ironically, despite drawing a blank in Delhi for the third consecutive time, the Congress could take solace in the fact that its vote share has slightly improved from the 2020 election. Also, a fragmented and weak AAP is good news for the Congress.

But the issue here is not why and how the AAP lost Delhi but the electoral blow the Congress suffered, which has been the case with the party in election after election, both at the national and........

© Free Press Journal