Congress’ comfortable win in three Assembly byelections in Uttarakhand should cheer the party inordinately. The result also signals that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s handsome victory in the Lok Sabha polls fought under Narendra Modi’s leadership doesn’t guarantee future gains.
Chief minister Harish Rawat was a candidate. For him it was a must win situation as he had to become an MLA within six months. Had he lost, his party would have been in turmoil.
Before the byelections, the Congress had to depend on other parties to be in power, and faced the risk of having its ranks poached on by the BJP, its main challenger. The BJP couldn’t pull it off, and now the Congress has reached the half the mark in the House.
The BJP would have surely made these calculations, but found itself unable to put up a good enough show barely two months after the Lok Sabha polls in which it won all the five seats in the state. If Mr Rawat can put on display the dynamism he is capable of, his rivals are in for a long haul. Evidently, it is local factors that went in Congress’ favour and it is too early to draw a larger picture from a clutch of byelections in one state. But the Congress’ victory in the first trial of strength after the parliamentary polls is a morale-booster. It can impact calculations in the Delhi elections where all concerned are debating whether there should be a fresh election for the Assembly.
