25-year-old Sanjana Jatav started dancing as soon as she won the election from Bharatpur Lok Sabha seat in Rajasthan. Her viral video has become a shining example of the success of the National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) in preventing the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from crossing the figure of 272 i.e. a simple majority on its own.

Sanjana, the wife of a police constable, defeated BJP’s Ramswaroop Koli on this seat reserved for Scheduled Castes. After winning this seat twice in a row, this seat slipped out of the hands of BJP. Sanjana is one of the 19 Congress members who reached the lower house of Parliament from seats reserved for Scheduled Castes.

His victory is not just a sign of the opposition alliance’s increasing numbers. It will ensure that the ruling party’s majority cannot suppress its voice in Parliament. In fact, the opposition parties are fully prepared to corner the third Narendra Modi government, and this became clear in Rahul Gandhi’s special press conference held two days after the election results. Citing the unnatural rise in the stock market after the exit polls and then the sharp fall on the day of the results on June 4, the Congress leader alleged that Modi and his number 2 Amit Shah are involved in a stock scam; through which they have helped industrialist Gautam Adani.

He has demanded a joint parliamentary committee probe into the entire matter. Congress has realized that the new government is not in a position to ignore the opposition’s demands like it did in the last five years. Rahul only said, “Now the opposition is stronger. The situation in Parliament has changed. The Prime Minister will no longer be able to work fearlessly like that.”

Parliament will not remain a battleground between the two parties. Rather, MPs like Sanjana are also the flag bearers of the social alliance that the opposition parties are slowly building to counter the dominance of the BJP that has been in place for the last decade. In the coming times, this alliance will increase challenges for the BJP beyond Parliament and assemblies.

If you ask around in the Congress, insiders will tell you that Sanjana’s victory is the result of Rahul Gandhi’s philosophy of awakening the fundamental ideology, on which he has been working continuously for the last few years and which now seems to be turning into a ground reality.

After humiliating defeats in two consecutive general elections, the Congress was seen as having lost its national relevance, particularly in its inability to counter the BJP’s Hindu nationalist agenda. No one expected the Congress to recover. “The party needed to re-establish itself as an idea beyond the prism of the BJP IT cell and a weak media,” says a Congress leader who won the recent election.

Justice: A New Narrative

Most importantly, the Congress has been able to break the electoral equation that the BJP had managed to create with its very careful social engineering. For example, the saffron party has prepared a broad and colourful blueprint of its distinctive Hindu identity and has given ample space to its core vote bank of the elite castes as well as the backward classes, scheduled castes and tribes in its framework.

This strategy proved to be effective in big states like UP and Bihar which were centred on caste equations. But on the other hand, its concept of Hinduism and the fanaticism associated with it, in which minorities were often targeted, gave rise to discontent among a large section of OBCs, Dalits, tribals and especially Muslims. Even liberal Hindus began to see India’s secular values ​​in danger because of this.

After Covid, a large section of the population, especially the low-income groups as well as people in rural areas, were troubled by lack of jobs and rising inflation. The country’s economy was growing but its benefits were not reaching the poor. In other words, the country was witnessing K-shaped growth, in which the economy was recovering from the crisis but this growth was not happening equally in all sectors.

This was the public’s sore spot, to capitalize on which Rahul Gandhi decided to create a new narrative. A close aide of Rahul says, “We were clearly told that we have to explain to the people: Congress’s politics is mainly focused on three things – secularism, welfare of all deprived sections including OBC, SC, ST and minorities, and pro-poor politics.” It is believed that this strategy proved effective because Congress has improved its performance on seats reserved for SC-ST. In 2019, it had won 10 out of a total of 131 such seats, while this time this figure increased to 31.

While Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra 2022-23 was aimed at spreading the message of love and brotherhood and uniting all sections against the hateful politics of the BJP, the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra taken out earlier this year focused on ensuring socio-economic justice to the poor and the underprivileged.

According to that aide, “Rahul Gandhi is in no hurry to get power. Rather, he wants that first of all people should understand clearly what the ideology of Congress is.”

However, this election was different in the sense that Rahul Gandhi, who has not been able to clearly state his views in the past, used every possible resource to clearly explain his political narrative. In this sequence, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was described as a symbol of crony capitalism i.e. a pro-capitalist government, in which industrialist Gautam Adani is the biggest beneficiary.

Maharashtra surprised

And Congress is of the opinion that the new image of Rahul that has emerged due to social media is proving to be fruitful. In this regard, the party puts forward the example of all the states that were covered during the Bharat Jodo Yatra. If we leave Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, then in all the other states, the seats of Congress have either increased or have remained the same as before.

Despite top leaders leaving the party, it has emerged as a major player in Maharashtra. Of the 17 seats it contested (four less than ally Shiv Sena-UBT) out of the 48 seats in the state, the Congress won 13, while the Shiv Sena (UBT) contested 21 and won nine. It contested against the BJP in 15 seats. In the entire country, of the 164 seats where the Congress and BJP were in direct contest, the Grand Old Party won 38. This figure is a significant improvement from 2019, when it won only 15 of the 190 such seats.

Maharashtra is also a clear proof that the Congress has been able to successfully convert the growing discontent in rural areas into votes. During the two weeks spent in the rural areas of the state during the Bharat Jodo Yatra, the party has won all the rural constituencies covered by it. Talking about the total 398 rural constituencies of the country, the Congress has improved its figures significantly – the party has won 75 seats this time compared to 31 in 2019. However, the BJP won 165 seats, which is almost twice the number of seats compared to Congress.

However, there are many factors that may make this celebration of success difficult to last for very long, especially in Maharashtra where India Block has won 30 seats. Assembly elections are scheduled in the state later this year and fighting unitedly against the NDA may not be as easy as it seems right now. At present, it is not completely clear which faction is the real Shiv Sena in the eyes of the public. Sena (UBT) managed to win nine out of the 21 seats on which it fielded its candidates. Shinde’s Sena contested a total of 15 seats and won seven of them. Of the 13 seats on which the two factions contested against each other, Sena (UBT) candidates won seven.

Talking about the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the public’s opinion seems more clear in the case of both the factions. Out of the four candidates of Ajit Pawar’s faction, only one was able to win, while NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar), which fielded candidates on 10 seats, won eight seats.

This is the first time since the formation of the Maha Vikas Aghadi that the Congress has won the maximum number of seats in the elections, and this is the reason why there has been a murmur in the Shiv Sena camp about the long-term utility of the partnership. Especially, because it is no longer the largest component in the MVA. Not only this, senior Pawar, who was earlier considering merging his party with the Congress, may also put his plan on hold after such a brilliant performance.

ethnic equation

A major pillar of Rahul Gandhi’s social justice formula was the caste census. However, the idea was originally proposed by Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar, who later switched sides. The real motive behind this promise of proportional representation or ‘jita abadi utah haq’ (as much population as right) was to bring OBCs, Dalits and Adivasis out of the BJP camp. And, it seems that UP and Bihar also responded well to this strategy where the Grand Old Party joined hands with the major regional parties of these states, the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Samajwadi Party.

Both parties have traditionally been dependent on Yadav and Muslim vote banks, due to which other caste groups got alienated from them. With the intention of changing this political picture, both parties adopted a strategy to re-balance their caste equations in which special attention was given to inclusiveness.

While RJD leader Tejaswi Yadav made the unemployment rise during the Modi government a big issue and compared it with the 2,00,000 government jobs allegedly given to him during his tenure as deputy chief minister in Bihar, the Samajwadi Party in UP again actively managed the PDA – backward, Dalit and minority – equation. The alliance with the Congress in both states ensured minimum division of non-BJP votes. As a result, the NDA’s number in Bihar decreased from 39 to 30 and in UP from 64 to 36.

Then, there is the role of minorities. It was quite evident during the Lok Sabha elections itself that minorities, especially Muslims, would vote with the intent to defeat the BJP for the first time. This alignment helped Trinamool Congress supremo and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee increase her seat tally from 22 to 29 in UP and Bihar – where the NDA suffered significant losses – as well as in a state where the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 became a major polarising issue. After ethnic violence in Manipur, Christians in the Northeast rallied behind non-NDA parties.

The immediate benefit of this went to the Congress, which snatched both the seats of Manipur. Not only this, it captured the only seat in the neighboring state of Nagaland after two decades and won the Tura seat of Meghalaya for the first time since 1998. However, minority polarization also has its own implications, and it has given the BJP an open opportunity to accuse the opposition of appeasement. Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma has already said that the 2024 Lok Sabha elections show that the Congress has become the favorite party of the minorities in the state. Out of the three seats won by the Congress, two have a Muslim participation of more than 60 percent.

a long trip

The opposition alliance India Bloc, thanks to a narrative built around economic crisis and social inequality and its social engineering, has managed to reduce the BJP’s tally by 63 seats, leaving it 32 short of a simple majority. But it still has a long way to go. The total number of MPs of the India Bloc is eight less than the BJP alone. The future of some alliances, such as the alliance between the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi and elsewhere, is not entirely certain.

At the same time, Congress was accused of bullying India Block like a big brother when it had only 52 MPs. Now, as Congress has emerged as a major party in the coalition with a good number of seats, it will have to play a more responsible role with the aim of maintaining the unity of the coalition not only to win future elections but also to keep the ruling party accountable inside and outside Parliament.

Despite becoming the second largest party in the country, Congress was just one step away from reaching the three-digit mark and got 140 seats less than BJP. On the other hand, BJP is standing strong against Congress in most of its strongholds. Until the Grand Old Party strengthens itself in these states, the allies will not let it take advantage of their support in the states where it is the junior partner.

The challenges for Rahul Gandhi in 2024 remain the same as in 2014 – to rebuild the Congress organisation in states like UP, Bihar, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and make it a winning party in states like Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra. The future of the party will also largely depend on whether it is able to convert the big gains in Rajasthan, Haryana and Karnataka into success.