The Hindu : Loss of a stronghold

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Apr 01, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

Loss of a stronghold

THE LANDSLIDE VICTORY scored by the Congress in the elections to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) could not have come at a better time for the party. Having wrested Punjab and Uttaranchal just a few weeks ago, the results from Delhi (for whatever it means to control the Municipal Corporation) must certainly help boost the party cadre's morale. In this sense, the converse is true insofar as the BJP is concerned. The leading constituent of the ruling NDA is losing out everywhere and this is despite the conscious efforts by its strategists to revive majoritarian passions, an agenda that came to its aid in the past decade to challenge the Congress as the "natural" party of governance.

The BJP's senior leaders may in course of time argue that the polls to the MCD were only an instance where only localised factors were involved (when they indulge in a review). This may be true in part, but the fact is that the BJP's presence in the capital city was built on a social base that had more or less empathised with its ideology. That the various wards constituting the Municipal Corporation of Delhi had been centres of RSS activity over the past few decades is a fact and this certainly had meant that the party had a strong presence there even before the Congress was weakened in several other parts of the country since 1989. The results of the MCD polls convey a strong message to the BJP in its old stronghold. The message is that a majority of those who had rallied behind the BJP in the past decade or so do not appreciate the party's resort, time and again, to revanchist slogans and its actions such as the abuse of POTO in Gujarat and the indifference of the administration in the face of communal riots. The verdict, in this sense, is a warning to the BJP against vitiating the social atmosphere with its communal agenda.

Be that as it may, the Congress as a party too will need to take its victory as an opportunity to restore its organisation. This has become all the more necessary because the votes in its favour in the MCD elections were also an expression of anger against the non-governance that marked the previous term when the Corporation was under the BJP's control. The woeful lack of civic amenities over which the BJP's elected representatives hardly showed any concern was one of the factors that must have alienated the BJP from the voters. This indeed is a message for the Congress too now that the party will be controlling the MCD. The experience, hitherto, within the Congress party's Delhi State unit has revealed the inability of the party's leaders to rise above faction feuds. That such feuds between the various leaders — Madanlal Khurana, Sahib Singh Verma and V.K.Malhotra — constituted yet another factor that contributed to the BJP's reverses is a fact that the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee leaders need to keep in mind. This aspect gains additional significance as elections to the Delhi State Assembly are due by October 2003. Hence, the newly elected corporators to the MCD who belong to the Congress will serve their own interests and that of their party only if they decide to remain sensitive to the civic needs of the city (the primary task of the Corporation). Any letup on this front would not only lead to the Congress as a party falling on bad times once again but also create a situation where the people get disenchanted with the political process in a big way. There were already pointers to this disenchantment in the low voter turnout in various wards even in this round.

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