Aug 07, 2026 13:15 pm IST

Opinion | From Punjab To Karnataka, Congress Just Can't Stop Hitting Self-Goals

Congress leaders often speak as though anti-incumbency is a natural resource that will eventually flow towards them. But it doesn't.

Rasheed Kidwai Rasheed Kidwai Columnist

Rasheed Kidwai Columnist

Indian politics has a habit of discovering national turning points in municipal wards, assembly by-elections, and stray remarks made outside Parliament. Sometimes, the instinct is justified. More often, a local rebuke is inflated into a national rebellion because the Opposition is hungry for hope, and television studios are hungry for narratives.

The Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) recent defeats in Bankipur and Datia deserve attention. Prashant Kishor has broken the party's three-decade hold over Bankipur, winning 64,151 votes and defeating the BJP by 19,324. In Madhya Pradesh, the Congress retained Datia by 6,016 votes. But on the same day, the BJP retained Manjalpur in Gujarat by more than 30,000 votes. The verdict was, therefore, a warning, not a collapse.

The temptation for the Congress will be to celebrate Datia and interpret Bankipur as evidence of a wider anti-BJP mood. It should, however, resist both impulses. Bankipur was not won by the Congress. It was won by a political entrepreneur who recognised a vacant space, invested himself in it, and convinced voters that neither the ruling alliance nor the established Opposition deserved their loyalty. That should worry the Congress more than it does the BJP.

In the immediate political future, the road to the 2029 Lok Sabha election will pass through Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand in 2027, and Karnataka in 2028. Together, these four states account for 126 Lok Sabha constituencies. They will test whether the Congress can manage leaders, choose winnable candidates, and preserve alliances - the three areas in which it remains most vulnerable.

Two Defeats Isn't A Wave

The 2024 Lok Sabha verdict altered the psychological balance of Indian politics. The BJP fell from 303 seats to 240 and lost its independent majority; the Congress rose from 52 to 99 and regained the status of the official Opposition party. The INDIA grouping demonstrated that Narendra Modi could be challenged when regional arithmetic, candidate selection, and local grievances worked together.

But the elections that followed have produced a far less reassuring picture for the Congress.

In Bihar in 2025, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won 202 of 243 Assembly seats. The BJP became the largest party with 89 seats, the Janata Dal-United (JD-U) won 85, and the Congress was reduced to six. In the 2026 Assembly elections, the BJP captured West Bengal with 207 seats and secured 82 of 126 seats in Assam. The Congress's decisive Kerala victory, where it emerged as the largest party with 63 seats, demonstrated what it can achieve with an identifiable state leadership, a........

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