Why Rahul Gandhi picked Rae Bareli over Wayanad

Rahul Gandhi has chosen Rae Bareli over Wayanad. He had posted a fabulous margin of victory in both constituencies. In Rae Bareli, his margin was 3,90,030 votes, and it was not very different in Wayanad where it was nearly 3,65,000 votes. The brother has decided to vacate the Wayanad seat in favour of his sister, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.Even assuming that people are upset with Rahul’s departure from Wayanad (unlikely but for the sake of argument) and cut down the margin of victory by half, Priyanka will still be able to sport a handsome victory. It may also turn out to be the other way round where the margin of victory may even go up by another lakh of votes.In Kerala, if somebody has the ability to pose a decent challenge to the Congress, it is the Left Democratic Front (LDF), but it may not have a grand incentive to do so and upset the fledgling narrative against Narendra Modi and the BJP that the Opposition has tried to establish. In fact, Annie Raja has welcomed a woman being put up in Wayanad. Instead of feeling bitter, she has put forward the gender parity argument.In the just concluded election, Annie Raja, the CPI candidate, could manage just about 2,83,023 votes against Rahul’s 6,47,445 votes. Even if the BJP voters abandon their share of 1,41,045 votes they secured this election, to ensure a stiff LDF challenge to the Congress, the numbers as they stand now will not add up.The Congress has often accused the communists in Kerala of being the “B team” of the BJP, but in this case even if the B, C and the rest of the teams come together — that is all those who contested the 2024 polls — to snatch away Wayanad may be impossible. It is a secure entry point for Priyanka. medium111085317On the contrary, if Rahul had passed on his Rae Bareli seat to his sister, despite the margin of victory that one has witnessed, a bypoll in Uttar Pradesh would have generated a lot of heat and drama. Again, to snatch away the seat there too would have been tough, but it would have generated tension and demanded hard work with a wounded BJP hunting with a reborn ferocity.Unlike in Kerala, the Congress in Uttar Pradesh would be dependent on the men, muscle and organisation of their ally Samajwadi Party to win the seat. Testing Akhilesh Yadav’s generosity again would not be such a good idea. None of the five assembly seats that form part of the Rae Bareli parliamentary constituency are with the Congress.Having reckoned the politics on the ground, and the way the numbers have arranged themselves, still, in a remote corner of one’s mind, one speculated if there was a possibility that Rahul would make an unconventional choice. That he would keep Wayanad instead of Rae Bareli. There are two reasons that supported this speculation till June 17.First, one wondered if Rahul would follow the example of his grandmother, Indira Gandhi, in her comeback election of 1980. She contested from two seats — Rae Bareli and Medak in undivided Andhra Pradesh. She won both but gave up Rae Bareli, even then seen as a family borough, for Medak. In terms of margins of victory, they were not vastly different in the two constituencies, but still she chose Medak.Watch: Priyanka Gandhi to contest from Wayanad medium nocaptionhttps://youtu.be/nrU-RecuMP8?si=nHYo4xoenPfAQpi6The reason for this is not clear. Perhaps she felt that in 1977 she had been rejected by the people of Rae Bareli and the people in north India had booted out the Congress, while people in the south had saved the party from being swept away. Perhaps it was an emotional acknowledgement of this.Interestingly, even in those elections when the tables were turned against the Congress by a ramshackle Janata Party alliance cobbled up in the very last minute, the Congress got 154 seats, 55 seats more than it got in 2024, and nearly 100 more than it got in 2019. The Janata Party alliance with the Left Front had 295 seats.Anyway, this time too one thought that Rahul would follow the footsteps of his grandmother, who often crops up in his speeches as an unquestioned personal figure of adulation. But the fact that he has not means he is following the conventional wisdom and logic of Indian politics, which tries to imagine political power by putting Uttar Pradesh at the centre of it all. The tropes are all about Uttar Pradesh being the route to the throne in Delhi. Many people who subscribe to this now think that retaining Rae Bareli automatically makes Rahul a claimant to the prime minister’s chair.However, one has to sound the bugle of caution here because all these assumptions about the Congress and Rahul taking over India very soon are a bit premature. This is not to take away the celebrations of his and the party’s moderate success. If one were to just focus on Uttar Pradesh, the Congress organisation is largely absent. Its vote share in the 2022 assembly polls was 2% and the number of legislators in the assembly is just two out of 403. The question then is if the party has to grow in the state, at whose expense will it have to grow? Will it grow at the expense of the Samajwadi Party and other Mandal parties or damage the Hindutva vote and empty the BJP vote coffers? medium111085440Despite the euphoria of victory in Faizabad that includes Ayodhya, the Hindutva vote getting dissolved entirely is very unlikely. It may get tempered a little but will find new ways to seek attention and jostle its way to the polling booth. That threat is nowhere near over; in fact, it may have been provoked. When such is the case, the Congress will have to grow at the expense of the Mandal parties, including the Samajwadi Party.Will the Mandal parties with the goodness of heart and for the sake of the nation allow the Congress to expand in their turf? Is politics such a naïve game? The Mandal parties grew at the expense of the Congress and that is not the case with the BJP, which has worked to create a pan-India Hindu vote. What will Dalit leaders Mayawati and Chandrashekar Azad do in the future with their community votes is a question that also becomes instantly relevant.Also, for the Congress to read the 2024 results only through the prism of Uttar Pradesh may be blindsiding itself to its massive organisational crisis in the rest of India. It is a fact that in states that they directly ruled (Karnataka, Telangana and Himachal Pradesh), they have not been able to pull it off. They have done reasonably well only in states where they have the patronage of big regional parties.In such a scenario, Rahul’s decision to retain Rae Bareli becomes pregnant with questions and meaning. How much elbow room will his allies allow him in the Hindi heartland states to rebuild the Congress? Should Rahul have used a more measured language after the results? medium111085412Speaking to the Financial Times in London, he said: “The space in the Indian political system has been blown up.” He also said: “A tectonic shift has taken place in Indian politics.” The confidence is good, but instead of these hyperbolic expressions, which do not reflect reality, he could have perhaps employed a more modest language, if not a humble syntax, to say that he had made a dent, and would like to consolidate the gains going forward. The recovery of their social bases for the Congress is a tall order.Finally, returning to the second reason that one thought Rahul may end up choosing Wayanad over Rae Bareli is because since 2021-22, he had embraced the political culture and ideas of the south. More than the politics of Kerala, the aggressive federalism of Tamil Nadu’s Dravidian model appears to have charmed him to such an extent that he has come to embrace MK Stalin as an elder brother. The Dravidian agenda is an exclusive agenda that may not eventually help in the recovery of a national party like the Congress.The Congress is now without a national or cultural argument of its own. It needs the crutches of either a Dravidian party or a Mandal party to prop itself up. What is the basis on which the Congress will recreate a pan-India appeal? It cannot certainly be on the basis of a welfarist utopia. To seek out an answer for this is the task before what looks like an ignited Rahul.One last thing. Priyanka joining Rahul in Parliament is going to create a new set of complications and comparisons to manage for the Congress. In the past two decades, Rahul has not demonstrated a recognisable and established parliamentary style. What if a more methodical Priyanka outshines him in this zone? With Rae Bareli going to Rahul, it is also clear who the political inheritor is in the eyes of Sonia Gandhi, but will the Congressmen too see it that way with the entry of Priyanka?Read more from the author here.