Instead of harvesting the wrath against BJP and using it to their advantage by opting for a collective form of leadership, the Congress decided once again to bestow their trust in the Hooda family who were given a free hand in the distribution of tickets.
This turned out to be the biggest blunder and this faulty selection was the single factor in the Congress defeat, explains Rashme Sehgal.
'I am not tired, nor have I retired.' Famous last words by Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda who led the Congress party to their third successive defeat in the assembly elections in Haryana.
And though the Congress can console itself by claiming the difference in vote share between them and the BJP was a mere one per cent, there is no doubt that the BJP succeeded in snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.
As per the latest Election Commission data, the BJP has won 48 out of Haryana's 90 assembly constituencies, bettering its tally in 2014, when it first formed the government in the state with 47 seats.
The Congress managed to win only 36 seats.
Haryana was ripe for a change of government. There was palpable public anger on the ground across all sections of society.
The misrule of the Manohar Lal Khattar government was visible in the lack of public services, broken roads, highest rates of unemployment amongst all states and poor medical facilities.
The Modi's government's decision to withdraw MSP to farmers, the introduction of the Agniveer scheme and the mishandling of the wrestlers' protest had all added to a strong sense of public disillusionment with the double-engine sarkar.
Instead of harvesting this wrath and using it to their advantage by opting for a collective form of leadership which brought under its ambit members of all communities, the Congress decided once again to bestow their trust in the Hooda family who were given a free hand in the distribution of tickets.
This turned out to be the biggest blunder the party could have committed because Hooda has a reputation of playing favourites and this faulty selection was the single factor in the Congress defeat.
The 17 seats Congress lost due to rebels in their party should prove an eye opener to the Congress high command.
The seat of Kalka located on the foothills of the Himalayas was lost by 11,000 votes with the rebel candidate garnering 32,000 votes.
In Dabwali, the Congress candidate lost by 610 votes with the rebel winning 2,000 votes.
In the crucial seat of Mahendragarh the Congress lost by 2,000 votes with the rebel getting 21,000 votes.
The story is the same in Gohana, Safidon, Tigaon, Ambala Cantt, Badhra, Sohna, BahadurgarhDadri, Assandhi and Rania.
With 14 Congress rebels in the fray that works out to 16.5 per cent of the 90 assembly seats.
But so confident was the Congress high command that Hooda would succeed in storming the citadel that they did not insist that Hooda take along all factions of the party in the state.
Why did Rahul Gandhi not prevail upon him to adopt a collective leadership model taking along Randeep Surjewala, Selja Kumari, Birendra Singh and other party stalwarts each of whom has their own sizeable following within the state.
The BJP also had its share of disgruntled candidates but the party succeeded in getting many of them to withdraw,
Many of the smaller parties such as the BSP, AAP, JJP and INLD also cut into the Congress vote bank where more than a dozen seats appear to have been lost with margins of around 200 votes.
During all his election speeches, Hooda kept talking about how all the 36 biradiri bhaichara in the state were supporting the Congress.
But his continuous attempts to sideline Dalit leader Kumari Selja was another key factor in his defeat.
Her refusal to campaign right in the middle of the elections, provided the BJP a golden opportunity to engineer a Jat versus non Jat polarisation.
Damage control came much too late and this helped divide the crucial Dalit and OBC vote leading to a further erosion of the anti-BJP vote.
The BJP used this to the hilt and its karyakartas during the last week of the elections fanned out with the message of how establishing a 'dynasty' in the state -- 'One family, one community' -- would ensure the sidelining of all other communities.
The family being singled out was, of course, the Hooda family while the community being alluded to was the Jats.
The fact is that the Jats with a population strength of 27 per cent in the state, remain the most dominant community owning most of the land with strong commercial interests.
These fears found resonance on the ground because the BJP succeeded in breaching Hooda's fortress in Panipat and Sonipat districts apart from performing well in other Jat-dominated regions of Hisar and Jind.
Rahul Gandhi did try and patch things up between the Hooda and Selja Kumari groups but it was too little, too late.
Electioneering is also a battle of perception and this divide paid the BJP dividends with the Dalit vote being divided equally between the Congress and BJP in the state's 17 scheduled caste reserved seats.
One of the most glaring examples of this internal rift between the Selja and Hooda camps was when the Congress allocated the Ambala Cantt ticket to a candidate supported by Selja Kumari.
He was not the most popular, but the Hooda camp then encouraged a candidate backed by him to stand as an independent.
The result was that a high-profile seat was lost by the division of the votes.
The BJP on the other hand is quick to do course correction.
Six months ago, the BJP decided to change the chief minister and brought in the low profile OBC leader Naib Singh Saini in order to garner the scheduled caste and OBC votes.
Saini immediately set on a course correction on the controversial issues introduced by Khatter.
These included issues like property IDs called Property Pehchan Patras apart from introducing reservation for backward classes and distributing special packages for scheduled castes.
He also began a campaign to highlight the corruption issues that took place under Hooda's ten-year tenure.
By doing so, much of the negativity around Khattar was removed.
The Congress strategists need to learn from the BJP on how the latter showed complete ruthlessness in dropping ministers and sitting MLAs so much so that when they found that the founder of the BJP in Haryana, Ram Vilas Sharma, was no longer a winnable candidate, the BJP got rid of him.
The differences between the BJP and the RSS seem to have been ironed out because during this election.
RSS karyakartas played a substantial role in micromanagement of voters at the grass root level.
The Congress is not a cadre-based party and has few workers to mobilise the public for the last mile effort.
It seems a pity that the Congress has not learnt from its earlier defeats.
The BJP wastes no time in course correction and ultimately, it is the art of micromanagement at the ground level and at the concluding stages of the election that pays dividends.
The Congress had become complacent and believed that Rahul Gandhi's well-attended rallies would help create a tsunami.
The question the party should ask the Gandhi siblings is why they were missing right through the election and whether showing up towards the end is any substitute for running a through and concerted professional campaign as was done by the saffron party.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com
