In his efforts to revamp the party ahead of the 2027 Gujarat Assembly polls, Rahul Gandhi alleges internal sabotage by Congress leaders.
Sixteenth-century English poet John Lyly supposedly said all’s fair in love and war, so no one raises an eyebrow when political parties employ different strategies to malign their rivals.
But according to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, a similar attempt has been made to weaken his party in Gujarat, as well, and he has accused a fourth of his party leaders in the state of working with the BJP, which has been in power there for nearly three decades.
Rahul Gandhi’s tour was aimed at revamping the party ahead of the Gujarat Assembly elections in 2027. The Congress had suffered the worst defeat there in 2022 with its vote share plummeting below 30 per cent for the first time ever, while the BJP’s vote share crossed the 50 per cent mark — another first in the state. The vote share of the Aam Aadmi Party — which turned the polls into a triangular contest for the first time after 1990 — was 12.8 per cent.
Even in the 2002 Assembly elections, which was marked by unprecedented polarisation, the Congress’ vote share in Gujarat was close to 40 per cent and the BJP remained less than 50 per cent.
In the 1990 polls, when the Congress was hit by the Bofors scam, the Congress was the largest party in terms of a vote share of 30.74 per cent, followed by the Janata Dal at 29.36 per cent and the BJP at 26.69 per cent.
Despite Mr Modi’s larger-than-life image, election data suggests that the Congress Party generally has a vote share of around 40 per cent in Gujarat and the BJP less than 50 per cent. The difference has, thus, been just the 10 per cent. It is, therefore, understandable that Rahul Gandhi wants to set his sights on Gujarat, especially as the AAP defeat in Delhi will make the Assembly election there a two-party affair once again. However, any Army general would agree that doubting one’s own soldiers is definitely not a winning strategy, and so he would do well to revise his outlook.
