Congress post-mortem on Uttarakhand debacle: infighting, key faces missing, ignoring past lessons

In the recent Lok Sabha Elections, the Congress again failed to open its account in Uttarakhand, with the ruling BJP winning all five seats in the hill state. In its preliminary assessment of the party’s poor showing, the Uttarakhand Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) has found that it may have lost all the seats again due to “lack of coordination, harmony and communication among the party leaders”.

The All India Congress Committee (AICC) has already asked senior leader P L Punia to review the party’s performance in Uttarakhand, but he is only expected to start it later this month, after the July 10 bypolls for two Assembly seats — Badrinath and Manglaur — are over.

The UPCC’s assessment is being conducted by its disciplinary committee chairperson and former minister, Nav Prabhat, who has already held meetings at the Assembly and block levels in Uttarkashi and Tehri Garhwal districts.

The BJP swept all five Lok Sabha seats in the state for the third straight time, having beaten the Congress in the intervening Assembly polls of 2017 and 2022 as well.

However, in the recent Lok Sabha polls, the Congress’s vote share has fallen to 32.83%, down from the 38% it had got in the 2022 Assembly polls, when it had managed to win 19 of the state’s 70 Assembly seats. Congress insiders point out that a “shocking aspect” of the party’s recent debacle was that it even trailed in 14 of these 19 Assembly segments.

In the Lok Sabha polls the Congress even trailed in the Bazpur Assembly seat represented by Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the state Assembly, Yashpal Arya. Similarly, in the Chakrata Assembly segment, from where the Congress’s former state president Pritam Singh is MLA, the party’s Lok Sabha candidate came third. In total, the party