The Congress continued its losing spree on Saturday posting its worst-ever show in Maharashtra and ending up a distant junior partner to the ruling Jharkhand Mukti Morcha in Jharkhand, further diminishing its role in the opposition bloc as other allies perform better.
While the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance's victory in Jharkhand was some consolation, losing a big state like Maharashtra after the upset in Haryana is likely to weaken the grand old party's broad bargaining power in this era of coalition politics.
The Congress party's strength in Lok Sabha also got reduced to 98 seats after it lost the Nanded Lok Sabha to the BJP in the bypolls.
The poor show of Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) in Maharashtra extinguished hopes of getting Rajya Sabha seats from the state in future.
On the other hand, the National Democratic Alliance with its stupendous victory is set to get a majority in the Upper House in the next cycle of biennial elections.
Despite being the dominant party of the opposition MVA in Maharashtra, the Congress failed to pull the weight of the opposition bloc and stood decimated in the face of an NDA tsunami.
The Congress which contested the highest number of assembly seats among MVA allies, 101 out of 288, was winning or leading in only 16 seats with one of the lowest strike rates of 16 per cent.
The worst strike rate in Maharashtra elections was of Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar at 11.6 per cent (with lead/win in 10 seats out of 86 fought), Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray managing 22 per cent (lead/ win in 21 seats as against 95 contested).
On the other hand, the strike rate of the BJP was the highest with 88.6 per cent (lead/win in 132 seats out of 149 it contested).
The BJP got a vote share of 26.46 per cent and was followed by Shiv Sena with 12.47 per cent and NCP with 9.35 per cent.
Among the MVA, the Congress had the highest vote share of 11.89 per cent, followed by the NCP-SP with 11.25 and the Shiv Sena-UBT with 10.28 per cent.
Interestingly, other parties got more vote share of 13.84 per cent than each of the MVA partners.
In Jharkhand, it was Chief Minister Hemant Soren-led JMM that saw the ruling coalition through as his party gained a four percentage vote share over the last elections while the share of the rest of the parties either fell or remained stagnant.
The BJP in Jharkhand got 33.15 per cent vote share while JMM got 23.17 per cent and the Congress 15.57 per cent.
The All Jharkhand Students' Union Party (NDA ally) lost around 5 per cent vote share compared to 2019 and the JMM gained that 5 per cent, while Congress gained 2 per cent.
The Saturday outcomes revealed that the Congress continued to falter on the slippery electoral landscape, struggling to win or improve in states where it is ruling and failing to uplift alliances where it is the senior partner.
In Haryana, where the Congress and BJP were in direct contest, the party could not convert the anti-incumbency of BJP's two terms into a win.
Now in Maharashtra, it was unable to retain its Lok Sabha gains or help its allies pull through.
Earlier in Jammu and Kashmir also, the National Conference had powered the INDIA coalition to victory while the Congress ended up a distant junior ally in the poll results.
With the regional players outshining the Congress in successive polls, the party's position in the opposition bloc is likely to weaken
In Maharashtra and Jharkhand, the Congress was on a sticky wicket even during seat negotiations with other allies after losing Haryana to the BJP for the third straight time.
Questions are also expected to be raised on the working style and political outlook of Congress party's chief strategist Rahul Gandhi who has of late focused heavily on caste census and Adani-Ambani bashing as his key electoral planks.
Both issues appear to have failed to resonate among the people at large in the poll-bound states.
The sole glimmer of hope for the Congress today was a comfortable Lok Sabha byelection win for Rahul Gandhi's sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in Kerala's Wayanad.
The party also won byelections to all three assembly seats in Karnataka, wresting one each from the BJP and JD(S), and retained Palakkad assembly seat in Kerala.
But that victory paled in comparison to the party's broad loss, mainly in India's richest state which was the ideal ground to return a verdict on Rahul's anti-Gautam Adani and anti-Mukesh Ambani pitch.
With Saturday's results, the Congress will enter the 2025 election cycle morally and psychologically depleted.
How the party finds an alternative narrative remains to be seen.
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