With the ignominy of a duck in Delhi, the free-fall in Congress' fortunes under Rahul Gandhi continued unabated with possibly grim forebodings for the grand old party.
The humiliating defeat in the national capital is the fifth successive debacle for the Congress since the Lok Sabha elections in May last year. It lost power in Haryana and Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir, the three states where it shared power in a coalition. In fact, a matter of serious concern for the Congress in the capital is the fact that its share in popular votes has gone down from 24.55 in the 2013 elections to 9.7 per cent in Tuesday's results.
From eight seats in the last elections, the Congress has been reduced to zero in terms of seats now. The entire chunk of the Congress votes that was lost this time appeared to have gone to the Aam Aadmi Party.
Interestingly, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which had emerged the single largest party in 2013 with 31 seats and a vote share of 33.07 per cent, lost only 1.5 per cent votes on Tuesday but that resulted in a loss of 28 seats in favour of the AAP.
The party led by Arvind Kejriwal reaped the benefit of the share of votes lost by the Congress and the BJP to get 36 seats more than last time. This included three seats earlier won each by the Janata Dal-United, Akali Dal and independent.
The contrast in Delhi is the most glaring in view of the fact that the Congress was at the helm for 15-long years till 13 months ago under the leadership of Shiela Dikshit, who held the distinction of longest-serving woman chief minister in independent India.
In fact, the assembly polls in Delhi held under Dikshit's stewardship was a trailer of things to come in the Lok Sabha polls held a few months later. In the assembly polls, the Congress not only lost power in the national capital referred to as 'mini-India' but got just eight seats in 70-member House.
The worst was to follow as the Congress reached the lowest mark of 44 in the Lok Sabha polls and failed to get even the Leader of the Opposition status after the United Progressive Alliance was in power for 10 long years in the first experiment of the Congress to share power at the Centre.
In Maharashtra, the Congress stood a poor third with just 40 plus seats in the 288-member assembly after being in power via the coalition route since 1999.
Similar was the plight in Haryana where the Congress could secure just 15 out of total 90m seats in the assembly after ten years in power with senior leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda as the chief minister. Its performance in Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir also showed the party in poor light.
Political observers feel the Delhi debacle needed to be taken seriously by the Congress. This, they said, was in view of the fact that the Congress had failed to come back to power in several states where it has been replaced by non-BJP parties.
The Congress has been out of power in Tamil Nadu since 1967 with the advent of the Dravidian parties. Similar is the situation in West Bengal for the past 37 years with the Left parties calling the shots for 33 years and now Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress.
With the surge of the mandal and mandir issues in the nineties, the Congress is in the opposition benches as a marginalised force in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar since 1989.
In the BJP-ruled Gujarat too, the Congress is out of power for over two decades with Narendra Modi being chief minister for 13 years.
A worrying aspect is that in states like Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, which earlier used to have governments of the BJP and Congress alternatively, the BJP is in the saddle for the last ten years.
Image: Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi
Full coverage: Battle for Delhi
