New Delhi: The Rajya Sabha election results have been bittersweet for the Congress and the key lesson for the party is going forward on the road to 2024 ensuring unity, say analysts who also feel a more hands-on approach of the central leadership would yield positive outcomes.
Some analysts also pointed out that "outsourcing" political management to regional satraps such as Bhupinder Singh Hooda in Haryana may have proven counterproductive and micromanagement by the Gandhi family was needed.
While in Rajasthan, the ruling Congress won three of the four seats, it suffered a setback in Haryana where the grand old party's Ajay Maken, a former union minister and a party general secretary, lost to the BJP-backed Independent candidate Kartikeya Sharma.
Congress's Haryana MLA and authorised polling agent BB Batra said while the vote of a party MLA was declared invalid, party MLA Kuldeep Bishnoi cross-voted for Sharma, a media baron.
Lack of unity seemed to be the party's undoing in Haryana.
In a tweet in Hindi after the voting, Bishnoi said, "Phan kuchalne ka hunar aata hai mujhe, saanp ke khauf se jungle nahi chorha karte (I have the talent to crush a snake's fangs, one should not leave the jungle for the fear of the snake)."
There is a feeling that Bishnoi should have been won over by the central Congress leadership. While disunity proved to be the party's undoing in Haryana, the story was completely different in Rajasthan with the faction-ridden state unit showing rare unity with both Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot camps working to ensure the success in the polls. Rasheed Kidwai, the author of "24, Akbar Road" and "Sonia: A Biography," said the hands-on approach of top leadership of the Congress was "missing."
"The Congress had outsourced it to regional satraps, whether it was Bhupinder Hooda in Haryana or Ashok Gehlot in Rajasthan. The political management should have been handled by the central leadership, which was missing" Kidwai said.
"Over reliance on regional satraps is going to complicate things because now in Rajasthan with the Gehlot-Pilot thing, Pilot camp would be under pressure to put further pressure on the top leadership," he said. Kidwai asked who will now take ownership of the Haryana "fiasco" and said the central leadership should have micromanaged the situation there which it did not.