It would be right to say that Congress which got 42 seats, down from 82 they held, has bitten the dust, though their voter base has not eroded beyond repair. What makes the Congress's task difficult now is that their longtime ally, NCP, ditched them to openly offer support to the BJP government even without being asked for it.
So the Congress now faces the unenviable task of sitting in the opposition not even as the leading opposition party and, worse, will have to build up a secular platform all on its own, with the NCP having taken a political somersault without as much as a "ta ta, bye bye".
Congress state unit chief Manikrao Thakare, who has resigned owning responsibility for the defeat, said, "People of Maharashtra have given us a mandate to sit in the opposition and we will abide by that. We will not compromise our ideology and support any communal party. We will analyse the results and find out reasons of our failures."
Which means on Prithviraj Chavan, who won from Karad South by an impressive 60,000 votes, falls the onerous task of holding his folk together as the temptation to defect will be huge for many MLAs, and the offers are many.
Chavan has emerged stronger, though his party is in ruins, and by indicating that he would be the leader of the party in the House, he has conveyed the message that he is ready for the tough battle of survival ahead.
In fact, in these elections, there was very little going for the Congress. Apart from the 15-year anti-incumbency, which was its major burden, were the various corruption allegations. In the end, Chavan tried to dissociate himself and the Congress from the corruption allegations listed against the NCP, mainly Ajit Pawar, but by then the grim and dark die was cast.
Farmers' suicides too weighed heavily against the party, apart from various other issues of governance and administration, mostly the delay in infrastructure projects.
Interestingly, it was party vice president Rahul Gandhi and Chavan, who were aggressive on breaking the 15-year-old alliance with NCP, with an argument that if at all the government is facing an anti-incumbency wave and hence not likely to come to power, why not test the waters on their own? That strategy was bound to fail against a rising BJP, and, in this case, the result was doubly so as its longtime ally NCP unceremoniously ditched them.
The multi-cornered contest actually helped some ministers — Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil, Balasaheb Thorat, Vijay Vadettiwar, Rajendra Mulak Patangrao Kadam, Varsha Gaikwad, Naseem Khan (in addition to Chavan), who all retained their seats.
The party faced the ire of the voters in Western Maharashtra, Marathwada and Konkan regions, with stalwarts Narayan Rane, Harshawardhan Patil and Rajendra Darda losing.
Chavan was the chief minister. Now, he will have to work as the chief mason, cementing the cracks, putting together the building blocks of a new secular platform with some allies, if possible, and then, of course, painting a brave face on what remains of the Congress facade.
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