Uttarakhand Result 2022: How Congress Threw Away A Great Opportunity In A Way Only Congress Could

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory! This is exactly what the Congress seems to have done in the hill state of Uttarakhand where its rival BJP has returned to power with a thumping majority, winning 47 out of the total 70 Assembly seats. 

The Congress managed to win only 19 seats, though it was widely expected to give a tough fight to the BJP that had been tumbling from crisis to crisis just before the Assembly election — the bureaucracy was demoralised, government employees were unhappy, and the people of the state were feeling the pinch with rising prices and growing unemployment. The state saw three chief ministers within a period of five months as the party tried to do damage control. 

A perception had started building that Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat was not fit for the job, as there was growing anger against his style of functioning. He was asked to resign by the BJP bosses on March 10, 2021 — exactly a year before the election results of the five states came out. 

The BJP did not have time to lose. It had to put its act together. And quickly.

So Trivendra Rawat was replaced by Tirath Singh Rawat, a BJP MP from Pauri constituency. But even he had to resign in less than four months of assuming office due to a constitutional technicality. The state then saw the third Chief Minister, Pushkar Singh Dhami, a young MLA — and a political novice — from the border district of Pithauragarh, who led his party in this Assembly election but lost his own seat from Khatima. 

For any other party in the business of competitive democracy, this turmoil in the rival camp should have come as a golden opportunity to wean away the electorate. But the Congressmen, rather than putting up a joint front against the rival BJP, were busy fighting their own factional wars to be the chief ministerial face of the party in the state.  

A Divided House

Less than two months before the state went to polls, Congress leader and former chief minister Harish Rawat took to social media to take on his own party organisation, accusing the "powers that be" of letting loose the "crocodiles in the sea of elections" where he was left to swim alone.

Rawat tweeted: “Isn’t it strange that we have to swim in the sea of elections and the organisational structure for cooperation in most places, instead of extending a hand in cooperation, is either turning its back or playing a negative role", reported The Hindu. 

Nothing could have been more damaging for a party like the Congress, which is notorious for bitter infightings and factionalism even at the central level, than its main leader lamenting in public that he had been left to swim with crocodiles by his own party colleagues. Harish Rawat did manage to silence his detractors in the party for the time being and got his way, but the message that was transmitted to the electorate was loud and clear: ‘how could a party, which cannot put its own house in order, even think of defeating a formidable rival like the BJP and lead the state?’ Result: Harish Rawat lost his seat in Lalkuwa to BJP with a huge margin — his second assembly election defeat in a row. He had contested from two seats in 2017 but lost both. 

How BJP Undid All Damage

On the other hand, the BJP leadership quickly got into the election mode after appointing Pushkar Singh Dhami as the CM. The murmurs of factional fights in the party were still rife. But the central leadership cracked the whip and all factional leaders fell in line. A press conference was held on January 12 in Dehradun to put up a show of unity in which the two former CMs — Trivendra Singh Rawat and Tirath Singh Rawat —  stood beside the incumbent Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and former central minister Ramesh Pokhariyal 'Nishank' . 

But much before that, Dhami and his team had already started identifying the potential trouble spots for the party — one of them was the controversial Chardham Devasthanam Board Act, which allowed the government to take control of the management of 51 temples in Uttarakhand, including those in Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri. Trivendra Singh Rawat had constituted the board in 2019 without caring about the anger and protests by the priests who till then controlled the temples — a decision that finally claimed his scalp.

The priests were so angry with former CM Trivendra Rawat that they did not allow him to enter the Kedarnath temple and showed him black flags in early November 2021. The BJP sensed it could snowball into a huge emotional ‘Hindu’ issue as the priests have some clout in parts of the poll-bound state, and Dhami announced to scrap the Devasthanam Board Act. 

How Congress Ruined Its Chances

Sensing that the BJP was facing anti-incumbency, some important leaders jumped the ship to join the Congress, chief among them was the influential Dalit leader and transport minister, Yashpal Arya, and his lawmaker son. They had defected from the Congress in 2017 when the BJP, riding the massive Modi wave, got 46.51 percent votes and won 57 Assembly seats in Uttarakhand. Harak Singh Rawat was another turncoat to join the Congress after he was expelled from the BJP before the recent election. 

These defections helped make a favourable atmosphere for the Congress, but the party failed to build on that and capitalise on any of the factors going against the BJP. 

What more evidence is required to show that the BJP was facing anti-incumbency in Uttarakhand, than the fact that Dhami, the man who was given the reins of the state, and was later entrusted with the responsibility to lead the BJP's election campaign, could not save his own seat in Khatima! 

It is ironical that despite mostly favourable conditions the Congress couldn't turn the tide in its favour, while PM Narendra Modi was going around mesmerising the hill folks and bringing them — vote by vote —  back to his fold. Although it must be noted here that despite Modi’s towering presence, the BJP won ten seats less than the 2017 Assembly election. It’s an indication that the Congress could have been a powerful challenger to the BJP, but it failed to cross the barrier.

Interestingly, the gap between the winning and the losing candidates in some constituencies is ridiculously narrow. For example, in Srinagar, BJP’s Dhan Singh Rawat defeated Congress candidate Ganesh Godiyal by only 587 votes. Similarly, in Almora constituency, Congress candidate Manoj Tiwari defeated his nearest rival Kailash Sharma of the BJP by only 127 votes. In Bajpur, Congress candidate Yashpal Arya (who defected from the BJP just before the election) managed to save his seat by just 1,611 votes. 

In many of these constituencies, independent candidates and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) played a spoilsport. The AAP had joined the fray with a bang and a thunder, but came out whimpering without winning a single seat. The chief ministerial candidate of AAP, Colonel Ajay Kothyal, whom Arvind Kajeriwal introduced to the voters as a deshbhakt and a soldier, got just a little over 6,000 votes. 

The AAP still has a reason to rejoice and celebrate — not in Uttarakhand maybe, but in Punjab where it is independently going to form the government. But the Congress in the hill state will have to start from scratch, especially when its aging warhorse, Harish Rawat, has suffered a humiliating defeat. Yet again.

The author is an independent journalist based in Delhi.

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