Three cheers!

The Congress victory in three States is something that we have to look into seriously. AICC president Rahul Gandhi, in his one-year tenure, has effected changes both organisationally and in the way it approached election campaigns. The party's outreach now combines conventional means with an active presence on the social media. Rahul has created several new departments: the farmers' wing, unorganised labour wing, and NRI wing. He also systematically divided the work among new leaders, acted as a bridge between them and created a system where daily to weekly reports are directly sent to him. 

In Karnataka, Rahul played smart by offering the Chief Minister’s post to the rival JDS. The sacrifice also laid the ground for a coalition of Opposition forces as the move encouraged smaller parties to step closer to the ‘big brother’. The 48-year-old Congress chief launched blistering attacks on the Prime Minister during his 82 rallies, declaring Modi ‘corrupt’. He attacked Modi on the Rafale Deal, the Nirav Modi scam, demonetisation and claimed he was a ‘thief’. 

‘Chowkidar chor hain,’ Rahul said. Rahul also raised issues of farmers distress, Rafale deal, corruption, and women's security in a spirited campaign. He also raised State-specific issues such as the Vyapam scam in Madhya Pradesh and farmers' suicides in Rajasthan. His promise of a loan waiver to farmers in the Hindi heartland states seems to have struck a chord with the people in villages. All these and many more would lead the Congress to success in the 2019 general elections, no doubt about it. 

Pradeep Kishore, Hyderabad Early dissolution paid off

It is heartening to see that K Chandrashekar Rao and his Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) swept the polls in Telangana trumping the TDP- Congress alliance in the youngest State of the country. The TRS won 88 seats in the 119-member Assembly giving Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao a landslide majority. The TDP-Congress alliance got 21 seats in total (Congress 19, TDP 2).  

A poll of exit polls for the 119-member Assembly with a majority mark at 60, had predicted a second term for the TRS with a healthy majority of 63 seats. The results went on to prove that Rao’s call for early dissolution of the Telangana Assembly paid off. Asaduddin Owaisi's AIMIM won 7 seats whereas the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won just one seat in the State.

The emphatic victory of TRS is, in fact, should be dedicated to the people of the State. The election results would now enable the TRS to play a crucial role in national politics. During campaigning, Chandrashekar Rao had said that his party would win with ‘bumper majority’. The exit polls also predicted that the TDP-Congress alliance, which claimed to have a ‘good chemistry, would fall far behind the TRS. However, the brutal majority of the TRS shows that Rao’s hard work had paid off. 

 - Vijaya Kumari K, Nalgonda