Polls 2012: Rahul Gandhi knocked down by cycle

The elephant was left dazed, the lotus never bloomed and the hand just could not lift. But the cycle rolled on. And as the father-son duo of Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav romped home in Uttar Pradesh, Rahul Gandhi’s Mission 2012 was in tatters.

In the process, the Samajwadi Party (SP) struck gold in UP and dethroned arch-rival Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) besides foiling the ambitions of the Congress to gain an influential foothold in the state. What mattered most was that it won a majority on its own.

Elsewhere too the Congress was battered. It was thrown out of power in Goa and it failed to dislodge the Akali-BJP combine in Punjab. The only solace was Uttarakhand, where the grand old party just scraped through, and Manipur, where it almost swept to victory.

In Punjab, for the first time in 46 years, the incumbent government broke the “revolving door” pattern and retained power.

The results showed that Rahul Gandhi got it all wrong during his hectic campaign. His party failed even in the assembly segments in his family strongholds of Amethi and Rae Bareli, despite the important supporting role played by his sister Priyanka.

In UP, Congress stalwarts fell by the wayside. Union law minister Salman Khurshid’s wife, Union steel minister Beni Prasad Verma’s son and senior Congress leader Jagdambika Pal’s son lost by huge margins.

As for Rahul, he shed his usual diffidence and candidly acknowledged his failure in front of the media: “I was trying to improve the political system of the country but the fundamentals of our party were weak. I take full responsibility for the defeat. I take it in my stride. We have to move on.” Gracious in defeat, Gandhi congratulated SP leaders Mulayam and Akhilesh.

Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh conceded defeat with all humility. “We failed to convince people that our party was capable of forming a government on its own by unsettling the BSP.” He did pay the customary compliments to Rahul for his contribution in the campaign and blamed the state leadership as well as himself for not being able to translate Rahul’s efforts into seats.

He even offered to resign as the general secretary in charge of UP affairs but maintained that it was strictly a matter between him and Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

None of the moves made during the campaign phase like announcing 4.5% quota within the OBC quota for Muslims, attracting candidates from other parties, getting SP Rajya Sabha member Rashid Masood to join the party paid dividends to the Congress.

With SP firmly in the saddle, it now seems that Union minister Beni Prasad Verma’s post-poll remark that the BSP, as an ally, is 1,000 times better than the SP may return to haunt the party.

In UP, it was clear that the Muslims did not trust the Congress and instead went with Netaji (Mulayam Singh Yadav) who had promised jobs and laptops. But more than that he raised hopes for a change in the political approach of his party with a pledge that “goonda raj” would be done away with. The rout of Mulayam Singh and his cohorts in 2007 was because SP hooligans had alienated people. Also, without Amar Singh and his Bollywood bandwagon, Akhilesh Yadav was focussed in his approach towards canvassing for his party nominees and introduced crucial changes in SP’s overall outlook.

What is worse, the Congress failed to reap the dividends of anti-incumbency plaguing Punjab. Rahul’s strategy failed in Punjab where he specially projected Amrinder Singh as a candidate for the chief minister’s post. But the Parkash Singh Badal government fought back the unpopularity.

No wonder these results, according to BJP president Nitin Gadkari, is a clear rejection of the Congress and is a pointer to the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Arun Jaitley, leader of the opposition in Rajya Sabha, said these results coupled with the recent Maharashtra civic poll results show a trend — people are dissatisfied with the Congress.