By Rakesh Mohan Chaturvedi, IANS
New Delhi : In the end it was the Congress party’s poor performance in office that undid it in Himachal Pradesh Friday, at a time when it badly wanted a win to offset the Gujarat humiliation.
Congress leaders here and in Shimla agreed that rising prices of essential commodities, unemployment and corruption charges against the high and mighty contributed enormously to the ruling party’s defeat in the 68-member house.
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), while winning just one seat, added to the Congress misery by substantially eating into its vote base among the poor and also the educated upper castes.
While Hindutva was the main plank of the BJP in Gujarat, the favourite theme of the rightwing party was missing in the hill state. Instead the party highlighted the “aam admi” issues, which ironically the Congress had used effectively to win the 2003 state elections as well as the 2004 Lok Sabha battle.
Congress sources admitted that prices of food grain, edible oils and vegetables had skyrocketed and this had angered a large mass of the electorate.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which won 41 seats in the 68-member legislature, naturally made an issue of it – and won convincingly even in areas that were traditional Congress strongholds.
The fact that Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh himself was accused of corruption only helped to further erode the Congress support base.
The Congress also failed to create new avenues of employment for the unemployed young, leading to a voter backlash.
Agreeing that her party failed to implement schemes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGA), Congress leader Vidya Stokes said this only generated anti-government feelings.
BJP leader Prem Kumar Dhumal, who will become the new chief minister Sunday, explained his party’s election strategy: “We fought the government policies, be it price rise, rising unemployment or corruption.”