Friday, 17 May, 2024
The two states were such strong Congress holds that they voted for the party even after the Emergency when large parts of India punished Indira Gandhi
The arrest of the controversial Shiv Sena Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut by the Enforcement Directorate on charges of money laundering has inevitably kicked off a storm in political circles. The former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, who s fighting a grim battle to retain control over his party effectively called the decision as one taken by “Hitler”. The NCP leaders too have come out strongly to protest against the move. In the din and the noise, hardly anybody seems to have paid attention to the Congress party. For old and loyal supporters of the Congress, it is a sad moment as the party once strode over the state of Maharashtra like a colossus. In fact, digging deep into electoral data, India Tracker has identified Maharashtra and undivided Andhra Pradesh as the two states that have brought the Congress down to its knees. The two states were such strong Congress holds that they voted for the party even after the Emergency when large parts of India punished Indira Gandhi. A quick look at electoral data would indicate how 2014 has proven to be the year that pushed the Congress into the margins, thanks largely to Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.
The first chart shows the vote share of the Congress in assembly elections of Maharashtra since 1990. Look at how the Congress has seen a steady bleeding in vote share during assembly elections, from 38.16% in 1990 to 15.86% in 2019. The 2014 assembly elections wee electorally and psychologically important because the Congress vote share slipped below 20% for the first time. Even in the Lok Sabha elections held that year, the Congress managed to win just 2 out of 48 seats. What explains the decline? Part of the reason is that a Congress breakaway, the NCP led by Sharad Pawar took away a large part of the vote share. The longer term and more dangerous reason for the Congress is the sustained rise in the support base and vote share of the BJP.
The story in Andhra Pradesh is entirely different. Initially, the Congress kept losing vote share to the regional party Telugu Desam. But thanks to the botched up and bitter division of the state Andhra into Telengana and Andhra, the Congress has been wiped out from Andhra and its vote share has gone lock stock and barrel to another Congress breakaway YSR Congress led by YSR Jagan Mohan Reddy. His father YSR Reddy had, as the second chart shows, fashioned the famous victories of the Congress in 2004 and 2009. While the party has managed to retain a toe hold in Telengana, the Andhra voter seems to have completely given up on the Congress as shown in the chart. Once again, 2014 has been the defining year, like in the case of Maharashtra.
In 2004, Sonia Gandhi led the Congress back to power because the party won a massive number of seats in Andhra and Maharashtra. The story was repeated in 2009. But come 2014, and Maharashtra and Andhra have joined states like Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Odisha where the Congress has become irrelevant.
