Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra at a Telangana rally
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, November 30: There is something to rejoice for in the Exit Polls in the Assembly polls for the national political parties. The Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress can selectively rejoice in the verdicts predicted by the Exit Polls.
The pollsters have largely predicted that the Congress may retain Chhattisgarh and win Telangana. The Bharatiya Janata Party is taking comforts from the predictions of the pollsters that the party may get to retain Madhya Pradesh and win Rajasthan.
The Exit Polls threaten to leave incumbent Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao heart-broken. He had renamed his Telangana Rashtra Samithi as Bharath Rashtra Samithi only a few months ago. His party had spent richly to establish the brand value of the Bharath Rashtra Samithi across the country. KCR was pursuing the national ambition. He wanted to play a key role in the national politics. The Exit Polls are showing exit doors to KCR from power in Telangana.
If the pollsters are proven right and the Congress wins Telangana, there may be far-reaching consequences in the national politics. The defeat of a regional party at the hand of a national party in Telangana will ring an alarm bell in the other states. The Telangana victory will also signal the revival of the Congress.
It may be recalled that former Congress president Rahul Gandhi had spent considerably long time in Telangana during the course of the Bharat Jodo Yatra. The Congress victory in Telangana will have the potential to send the adrenaline rushing in the veins of the Congress workers in the nearby states of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. The Congress already won a landslide victory in Karnataka.
The Telangana victory will also ensure that the Congress workers are no more suffering with self-doubt. It will also assert without doubt that the Gandhi family can still win elections for them. It is to be noted that the Congress national general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra shared the burden of campaigning in Telanagana while her brother Rahul Gandhi stuck to his outreach with various sections of the people in the state.
Additionally, Telangana along with Karnataka may also take most of the burden of the Congress to raise resources for the Lok Sabha elections. A strong Congress on the path to revival will be a nightmare for the likes of Naveen Patnaik in Odisha, Jagan Mohan Reddy in Andhra Pradesh, Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal. These three states in particular are the natural launch pad of the Congress for revival.
The Congress is also in power in Himachal Prdaesh while being the main Opposition party in Punjab, Assam, Kerala, Gujarat, and Maharashtra. The Opposition block, which is yet to take off on the ground, may further lose steam if the Congress wins the Telangana Assembly election. The Congress may consider the option to contest the Lok Sabha elections on its own streghth and force the regional parties to come for a post-poll alliance after the verdict of the 2024 poll.
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