The Goa formula of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, mastered by the Congress and its army of betrayers and backstabbers, seems to have become the national template of this “national party”.
The superlative performance of self-goals by betrayer sleeper cells within the party did their job. They were of course ably controlled and mastered by the remote control held in the hands of the BJP.
The exact math of how betrayers and independents – surely planted by the ultimate winner – is as clear as fresh lassi on a Haryana highway. But before we get to that, let's go back to the Goa formula.
In 2017, in Goa, the Maharaja AICC in charge and the conductor State President almost pulled back Congress leader Luizinho Faleiro from the gates of Raj Bhavan, where he marched with 17 plus seats (with allies ready to back him) to form the government. These 17 seats were managed despite widespread sabotage attempts.
In 2022, this was even more blatant. According to some on-ground reports, there were clear attempts by the blue-eyed conductor to offer tickets to random people who could – well – ‘afford’ to fight an election. The master plan of giving away tickets to those who could afford a poll battle and backing vote cutters to cut their party votes, resulted in the Congress getting just 11 seats. And even those seats were won by the 8-member Brutus’ gang, who pledged that they would never defect. But as expected they did. This is how the BJP managed to split the Congress, in Goa, twice in three years.
But that didn’t stop the bleeding. The Congress is still not looked at as a party where its responsible leadership in Goa is 100% loyal and has no tuck (or trucks) with the ruling party. The buzz within is, that almost regularly, Congress loyalty in Goa, is put on a truck, like iron ore, and transported away.
The AICC General Secretary when this party was cut to pieces was KC Venugopal. He signed off the candidates list in Haryana too, as general Secretary.
And this is the Haryana story. The Congress was nine seats short of the majority. It was very much on course to winning at least 16 more.
In 15 seats, the candidate who came third was an Independent candidate. This Independent candidate got more votes than the margin of defeat of the candidate who came second. So it's clear that the Independent spoilt the chances of the second-placed candidate.
And who were these independents? In 12 of these 15 seats, the BJP won. Of these 12, there were clear Congress rebels in three of them, while 9 were other independents, undoubtedly backed either by the BJP or the Brutus gang within the Congress.
In addition, Congress lost four other seats where rebels won or came second. Therefore, seven seats were lost directly due to party rebels and nine seats due to an independent cutting votes.
The Congress failed, or self-destructed 16 seats, cruelly crushing the people's faith and support that was coming to the Congress.
Importantly, like in Goa, the local party unit had absolutely no say in ticket distribution. Tickets in Haryana were distributed according to a survey conducted by their new poll guru Sunil Kanugolu (who achieved success in Karnataka). His survey (the jury is out whether it was aerial or ground) was considered the final piece of paper in poll distribution, bypassing the ground realities that only local leaders knew. The result is there for all to see.
Before the election, K C Venugopal had said, “People are with Congress; this election is one-sided. The results showed that this was more like a sideshow of how defeat can be expertly snatched from the jaws of victory. A show whose main scriptwriters are likely to be in Goa, or did this show, once upon a time, in Goa.