Delhi Assembly Election 2025: For The Third Time, Congress Failed To Open Account

Since it was dislodged from power by AAP a decade back, Congress failed to consolidate its vote bank and leaders were visibly missing from electioneering.

New Delhi: Congress failed to open its account for the third successive assembly elections in Delhi. The Delhi Pradesh Congress office wore a deserted look as the results became clearer with the progress of the day and its leaders who were claiming victory earlier refused to comment. The party became third in over 65 of 70 assembly constituencies. It is not without reasons and ETV Bharat tried finding some of those.

Factionalism of Leaders

The factionalism of Congress leaders was not missing during the Delhi Assembly elections. There was a lack of coordination between new and old leaders and after voting, Mudit Agarwal, the Congress candidate from Chandni Chowk, made several allegations against party leader Sandeep Dixit.

Distance of Central Leadership from Campaign

BJP unleashed all leaders and powers in electioneering. From the Chief Ministers of the BJP-ruled states to key central leadership, everyone attended rallies after rallies, seeking votes for party candidates. BJPs' top leaders campaigned door-to-door and attended roadshows and public meetings which came to fruition on D-Day.

On the contrary, the visibility of central leaders of the Congress was limited and many popular faces of the party gave a miss to the crucial phase of electioneering. Although, Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi campaigned vigorously a week ahead of the poll.

Limited Public Outreach

The Congress listed five poll guarantees in the manifesto, from giving Rs 2,100 monthly allowance to women, free electricity, Rs 8,500 monthly allowance to the youth to an LPG cylinder for Rs 500 along with free raion kit. But the party failed to take these schemes to the public, unlike the BJP which took all its poll guarantees to the people through door-to-door campaigns.

Micro-level Booth Management

On the polling day, senior BJP leaders played the role of polling agents, encouraging macro-level party workers. This resulted in a sizeable number of electors voting for the BJP. This activity was noticeably missing from Congress.

BJP Got Congress' Vote

Explaining the reason for Congress's debacle, Congress leader Udit Raj wrote in X post, "The trends of the Delhi Assembly results suggest that BJP is getting the advantage. The Congress vote that went to the Aam Aadmi Party was of Congress ideology but it seems to be going to the BJP. People's leader Rahul Gandhi understood this and tried to bring it back through his election speech. A leader can give a message and he did that. Delhi Congress did not work on the third narrative, which was social justice. In this way, Congress was seen hanging between BJP and AAP. This was a golden opportunity to bring back the lost votes of the party. The result of the gap between the thoughts of top leadership and the local leadership is coming to the fore."

Dalits-OBCs Voted for BJP

Raj also explained how the Dalit and OBC votes went to the BJP. "Dalits-OBCs took revenge by defeating Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi Vidhan Sabha. In 2006 when Congress gave reservation to OBCs in higher education, Arvind Kejriwal protested through Equality Forum. ₹18000 per month was announced for Granthi and Pujari but not for Buddhist, Valmiki and Ravidas priests and neither did they get the benefit of CM Teerth Yatra. Not even one Dalit-Muslim-OBC was made out of 11 Rajya Sabha seats. Votes were taken by putting up picture of Dr. Ambedkar but hatred for his ideology. Dalits-OBCs voted for BJP without seeing Congress in the fight," he wrote on X.

Accepted Defeat before Voting

After filing nominations, many Congress candidates were seen accepting moral defeat as they didn't hold any special election campaigns at the ground level, failing to take the right message to the electors.

Lack of Strong Faces

While both BJP and AAP fielded strong candidates against each other, Congress failed to do so which impacted the party's fate in the poll outcome.

Missing Regional Leaders

Since AAP came to power a decade ago dislodging Congress, the local leaders failed to leverage their capacity in consolidating the votebank. This too resulted in a faceloss for the party.

Rahul Gandhi's Programs Cancelled

Many of Rahul Gandhi's election campaigns were cancelled while he could not reach the venue of some. His padyatra for party candidate Sandeep Dixit was also cancelled, which sent the wrong message to electors.