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Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

Opposition doesn’t know how to beat BJP. What it can learn from Hungarian Magyar’s playbook

Rahul Gandhi has chosen to ally with regional parties that brought the Congress down to where it is today. Survival, not revival, seems to be the priority.

Driving through the IA market in Kolkata’s Salt Lake ahead of the second phase of polling in West Bengal, I stopped to listen to a young politician’s fiery speech before a gathering of 40-50 people. He was Ranajit Mukherjee, the Congress candidate from the Bidhannagar constituency. I caught up with him later: “Do you really fancy your chances?” He was forthright: “No, but I am doing it for the next election. I want the people to know my face now. I will fight for them for the next five years. By 2031, the Congress will be a formidable force in Bidhannagar.”

A few days earlier, Rahul Gandhi had launched a broadside against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, saying that if she had run a clean government and not polarised Bengal, the BJP wouldn’t have gained an opening in the state. I asked Ranajit about Gandhi’s attack. Ranajit vehemently defended Gandhi, emphasising how being in alliance with the TMC for two decades hurt the Congress. He found barely 20 party workers in the constituency to campaign for him.

“Rahul ji has done the right thing. It’s time the Congress stood on its own and brought back its voters and workers who left the party,” he said. The Congress stands to gain from Banerjee’s loss, as she was the one who appropriated its voters after quitting the party in 1997. “The BJP remains our principal enemy, of course,” Ranajit clarified hastily.

The Bidhannagar Congress candidate, who ended up with 1,498 votes, was obviously in a dilemma: whose defeat is better for the Congress—Mamata Banerjee’s or the BJP’s? His party high command is no less confused. Days after his tirade against Banerjee, Rahul Gandhi began chastising those “gloating about TMC’s loss” and alleging a “theft” of “Bengal’s mandate” by the BJP. An analysis of the results by my colleague, Moushumi Das Gupta, shows that there were 26 seats where the BJP’s victory margin was less than the number of deleted voters under dispute. There were 86 seats where the BJP’s victory margin was bigger than the deletions. But even without those 27 lakh controversial deletions, the BJP would have dethroned the Trinamool Congress government. Facts seldom come in the way of conspiracy theories as we know.

For Congress, it’s survival over revival

In Tamil Nadu, the Congress looks set to dump its old ally, MK Stalin’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), and tie up with actor Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri........

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