Karnataka electoral victory likely to energise a divided opposition ahead of national elections due next year
\nNEW DELHI
\nIndia\u2019s embattled Congress party won big in a southern state election this weekend, exceeding expectations and gaining fresh momentum to take on entrenched Prime Minister Narendra Modi in national elections next year, top politicians and analysts said.
\nAt the same time, they cautioned that Congress\u2019 victory on Saturday in Karnataka state, home to the booming tech hub of Bengaluru, was largely due to local factors.
\nThe popular Modi\u2019s strongman image and Hindu polarisation strategy, they said, would likely power his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to victory in upcoming elections in the heartland states and nationally.
\nBut for the beleaguered opposition party, which won fewer than 10% of the 545 seats in parliament\u2019s lower house in 2019, the win provides a foothold to re-establish itself as a political force to be reckoned with in the world\u2019s largest democracy.
\n\u201cThis is an opportunity for Congress to enhance state efficiencies in Karnataka, build a new governance model and showcase that to the country,\u201d said Prithvi Datta Chandra Shobhi, a political commentator who teaches at Krea University in southern India.
\nFor the near term, however, he added: \u201cThese results have no bearing on the 2024 elections, they don\u2019t help us to predict what might happen either in Karnataka or nationally so far as Congress\u2019 chances are concerned.\u201d
\nCongress, which fared poorly in Saturday\u2019s municipal elections in India\u2019s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh in the north, where the BJP swept all 17 mayoral seats, next faces elections late this year in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh states.
\nAmong its many challenges: to resolve internal rivalries, market its platform of welfare economics, forge strategic alliances with India\u2019s multitude of regional parties, and counter the strong messaging power of Modi and the BJP, analysts said.
\nCongress ruled India for 54 of the 75 years since independence from Britain, but is now at its weakest since Modi gained power nationally in 2014.
\nThe party has won just one state election since December 2018, crumbling under the onslaught of the BJP\u2019s Hindu nationalism, the government\u2019s generous social spending, Modi\u2019s popularity, and its own leadership vacuum.<\/p>\n
Strongman Modi
\nThe impressive win in Karnataka, the BJP\u2019s only stronghold in the south and where Modi invested personally in campaigning, was touted by Congress officials as the beginning of its comeback nationally.
\n\u201cThis is an amazing beginning,\u201d said Rajeev Gowda, the head of research at Congress and a former federal lawmaker. \u201cThe momentum is picking up for a fight back … Each state victory can help keep the momentum.\u201d
\nThe bread-and-butter issues of unemployment and inflation that Congress highlighted in Karnataka, Gowda said, are critical issues nationally as well, especially as the Indian economy\u2019s recovery after the pandemic was uneven.
\nMilind Deora, a former federal minister from Congress, said there was new momentum after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi\u2019s 135-day cross-country march to revive the party, a win last November in Himachal Pradesh state, and now Karnataka.
\n\u201cWe need to adapt these learnings to every election-going state in 2023 and more importantly to parliamentary elections next year,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cNothing is impossible in politics.\u201d
\nBJP officials countered, however, that the Karnataka result was unlikely to be replicated nationally, especially since Indians tend to differentiate between regional and federal concerns.
\nA reputable pollster who got the Karnataka results right backs the BJP\u2019s view.
\nAsked by the India Today-Axis poll how they would vote if the Karnataka election had been a national election instead, 10% of the respondents shifted to Modi, enough to overturn the result.
\n\u201cWe have to learn from every loss … but it must also be recognised that we won three states this year and going ahead there are five elections to come,\u201d BJP spokesperson Nalin Kohli said.
\n\u201cEach of these states have different challenges and we cannot have a common strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Karnataka electoral victory likely to energise a divided opposition ahead of national elections due next year NEW DELHI India\u2019s embattled Congress party won big in a southern state election this weekend, exceeding expectations and gaining fresh momentum to take on entrenched Prime Minister Narendra Modi in national elections next year, top politicians and analysts said. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331255,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-331472","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n