Drubbing for Cong in M’rashtra LS bypolls
Urban backlash in Erandol, Jalgoan and Ramtek.
By Girish Kuber, TNN |
MUMBAI: It started in Mumbai, and then spread to Pune, Thane, Nagpur, Delhi. On Thursday the same story was repeated when voters slammed door on the Congress in all the three Lok Sabha by-polls, in constituencies with large urban areas.
The results of the three Lok Sabha bypolls at Erandol and Jalgaon in north Maharashtra and Ramtek in Vidarbha, are a wake up call to the ruling party. In all three elections, the Congress lost badly. Coming ahead of the Uttar Pradesh elections, the party seems to be losing ground in cities.
In all liklihood the Congress will appoint a committee of jobless leaders to study reasons behind the defeat; many within the party feel there should be a serious rethinking. “The party needs to give up its adhoc ways. We don’t have cohesive strategy in running a party or the government. Opposition sets our agenda,” a senior Congress leader admitted. He cited the SEZ issue as an example to illustrate how the party and the government talk in different voices.
“It’s now clear that we are not with people on the SEZ issue. What’s even more worrying is that even the party and the government are not on the same side on this,” he said, refering to the recent developments around SEZs. He was also critical of state chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh who has been busy courting both, industry and farmers, on the SEZ issue.
The Congress had send a team of observers to talk to affected people in the SEZ locations; the team’s findings were very different from the government’s view. Such was the confusion that even the state Congress president Prabha Rau had to distance herself from the committee’s view.
“It’s not only the SEZ issue that we mismanaged. We equally messed up the issue of farmers’ suicides,” another leader from Vidarbha said. “The agrarian crisis in the state’s cotton belt has exposed the Congress’ insensitivity. No single leader of any stature thought it necessary to tour the ravaged villages to console people,” he said.
Nearly 2,000 farmers have ended their lives in the Vidarbha region in the last two years. Incidentally, Ramtek, one of the three Lok Sabha by-polls that Congress lost on Friday, lies in Vidarbha.
A section of the Congressmen are apprehensive of the party’s handling of its alliance partner, the NCP. “We should be more worried not about rivals but friends, particularly the Sharad Pawar-led NCP,” a member of the anti-Pawar lobby said. “The NCP has been stealing issue after issue from the Congress but the party leadership doesn’t seem to be aware of it,” he said.
The results of the three Lok Sabha bypolls at Erandol and Jalgaon in north Maharashtra and Ramtek in Vidarbha, are a wake up call to the ruling party. In all three elections, the Congress lost badly. Coming ahead of the Uttar Pradesh elections, the party seems to be losing ground in cities.
In all liklihood the Congress will appoint a committee of jobless leaders to study reasons behind the defeat; many within the party feel there should be a serious rethinking. “The party needs to give up its adhoc ways. We don’t have cohesive strategy in running a party or the government. Opposition sets our agenda,” a senior Congress leader admitted. He cited the SEZ issue as an example to illustrate how the party and the government talk in different voices.
“It’s now clear that we are not with people on the SEZ issue. What’s even more worrying is that even the party and the government are not on the same side on this,” he said, refering to the recent developments around SEZs. He was also critical of state chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh who has been busy courting both, industry and farmers, on the SEZ issue.
The Congress had send a team of observers to talk to affected people in the SEZ locations; the team’s findings were very different from the government’s view. Such was the confusion that even the state Congress president Prabha Rau had to distance herself from the committee’s view.
“It’s not only the SEZ issue that we mismanaged. We equally messed up the issue of farmers’ suicides,” another leader from Vidarbha said. “The agrarian crisis in the state’s cotton belt has exposed the Congress’ insensitivity. No single leader of any stature thought it necessary to tour the ravaged villages to console people,” he said.
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Nearly 2,000 farmers have ended their lives in the Vidarbha region in the last two years. Incidentally, Ramtek, one of the three Lok Sabha by-polls that Congress lost on Friday, lies in Vidarbha.
A section of the Congressmen are apprehensive of the party’s handling of its alliance partner, the NCP. “We should be more worried not about rivals but friends, particularly the Sharad Pawar-led NCP,” a member of the anti-Pawar lobby said. “The NCP has been stealing issue after issue from the Congress but the party leadership doesn’t seem to be aware of it,” he said.
In the recently concluded municipal elections, the NCP openly sided with Congress’s rivals. Another issue that may boil over would be ‘outsiders’ versus ‘insiders’. There is a strong resentment within the party over the red-carpet treatment being meted out to leaders parachuting from other parties while ignoring the loyalists. “Party laps up even the third or fourth rung leaders from other parties.
It’s time we show some discretion in welcoming defectors,” one of the loyalist -leader said. Recently, a group of “original Congressmen”—who have always stayed with the party— led a delegation to the high-command to register their protests over the partisan attitude of the leadership. This section was upset that leaders like Narayan Rane—who migrated from Shiv Sena—is being given too much importance at the cost of ignoring loyalists.
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