‘Consolation prize’ Telangana could be game-changer for Congress

Gasping for breath in Telangana until a year ago, the Congress scripted a stunning electoral revival in the state on Sunday (December 3). The party’s emphatic win has ended Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) chief K Chandrasekhar Rao’s decade-long reign in Telangana and blunted the BJP’s ambition of expanding its electoral footprint in a key southern state ahead of next year’s Lok Sabha polls.

Despite its disastrous performance in the Hindi heartland states of MP, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, the Congress has reasons to be upbeat about its Telangana win. Coming as it does within months of another stellar victory in neighbouring Karnataka, the Telangana triumph has the potential of bolstering the party’s poll prospects in the wider South as the party prepares to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP in the 2024 general elections.

The BJP may have limited electoral presence in the country’s South, but the Congress’s inability to consolidate its base in this region, particularly after 2014, has had a direct and adverse impact on the Grand Old Party’s country-wide tally of seats in the Lok Sabha. What has troubled the Congress further is that dominant regional parties in the southern states — be it Naveen Patnaik’s BJD in Odisha, Rao’s BRS in Telangana, Deve Gowda’s Janata Dal (Secular) in Karnataka or the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu — have, covertly or overtly, aided the BJP at the Centre even if they have stridently opposed the saffron front in their respective states.

Further opportunities

For the Congress, the Telangana mandate provides further opportunities that the complacency-prone party needs to grab and exploit with urgency. Just as its Karnataka victory earlier this year boosted the Congress’s morale in Telangana and gave its campaign an added sense of conviction, the party would want to use its seat of power in Hyderabad to revive and rebuild its moribund Andhra Pradesh unit.

There is no denying that the Congress has a tougher task in Andhra, where the voter still blames it for the state’s bifurcation and the party has no credible leadership left following waves of attrition to Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSR Congress, Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP and the BJP. However, the current victory should give the Congress leadership the courage to rebuild the party in Andhra just as it did in Telangana.

Similarly, the party has the chance of reinventing itself in Odisha, another southern/eastern state where the BJP isn’t yet in a dominant position while the ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) is set for a transition of leadership as ageing and ailing Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik gently pushes aide VK Pandian to the helm.

Leaders and cadres

Needless to say in both Andhra and Odisha, the Congress needs to push into leadership roles individuals who, like Revanth Reddy in Telangana, are popular, bold, resourceful and cunning, in equal measure.

In Kerala and Karnataka, the Congress already has a strong grassroots cadre. And, despite an equally strong Left Front in Kerala and BJP in Karnataka, the Congress has proved in the past that on the back of a credible campaign, it can steer itself to power despite its inherent deficiencies of factionalism and inertia.

As negotiations for the Opposition’s INDIA coalition restart, the Congress and its allies from the southern states would certainly hope that the Telangana results will help them collectively mount an electoral pushback against the BJP.

North vs South

Such an eventuality would also sharpen the clash between the North and the South or, perhaps, even the Sanatana versus Dravidian narratives, among others. The BJP, now limited electorally to the north of the Vindhyas but also almost invincible in this massive political land mass, will undoubtedly continue building on its Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan rhetoric with mascot Modi at the vanguard.

The INDIA partners from the southern states, backed by the Congress, could mount a fight back on issues like Dravidian identity, linguistic pride and the Centre’s assault on federalism, each of which draws a strong emotional response from the electorate of these states.

The Telangana win, thus, may seem like a mere consolation for the Congress on an otherwise bad day but its impact on the party’s poll prospects in the wider South may be far greater – if only the Grand Old Party decides, for once, to play its cards right.