Congress post-mortem on Uttarakhand debacle: infighting, key faces missing, ignoring past lessons

The UPCC’s assessment is being conducted by its disciplinary committee chairperson and former minister, Nav Prabhat, who has already held meetings at the Assembly and block levels in Uttarkashi and Tehri Garhwal districts.

The BJP swept all five Lok Sabha seats in the state for the third straight time, having beaten the Congress in the intervening Assembly polls of 2017 and 2022 as well.

However, in the recent Lok Sabha polls, the Congress’s vote share has fallen to 32.83%, down from the 38% it had got in the 2022 Assembly polls, when it had managed to win 19 of the state’s 70 Assembly seats. Congress insiders point out that a “shocking aspect” of the party’s recent debacle was that it even trailed in 14 of these 19 Assembly segments.

In the Lok Sabha polls the Congress even trailed in the Bazpur Assembly seat represented by Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the state Assembly, Yashpal Arya. Similarly, in the Chakrata Assembly segment, from where the Congress’s former state president Pritam Singh is MLA, the party’s Lok Sabha candidate came third. In total, the party trailed in 63 of the state’s 70 Assembly segments.

“During my tour, I’m trying to understand the impact of lack of coordination, harmony and communication within the organisation on the results. In the two districts I travelled so far, people told me that there was lack of harmony and respect for one other, and that infighting was encouraged,” Prabhat told The Indian Express. He said he was trying to identify reasons for the party’s poor performance and gathering suggestions about what to do to change things as the party starts its preparations for the 2027 Assembly polls.

State Congress vice-president (organisation and administration) Mathura Dutt Joshi said Prabhat has been asked to travel across the state to conduct a review of the Lok Sabha poll loss, and that he will revise the party’s strategy for the upcoming local body, panchayat and Assembly elections as per the feedback.

Another senior state leader said such review meetings were done after losses in four other elections in the past — two Lok Sabha (2014 and 2019) and two Assembly (2017 and 2022) polls — but shortcomings found during the reviews were never addressed.

For example, before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the party directed local units to add 21-51 people to each polling booth committee, but it was not aware how far this instruction was actually carried out on the ground.

Another party leader said that if senior leaders like former chief minister Harish Rawat, Pritam Singh and LoP Arya had contested this time, the Congress could have won some of the seats. “The party asked them, but they refused to contest, citing various excuses,” said a leader.

Harish Rawat is the most prominent face of the party in the state, but in the Lok Sabha elections, he had confined himself to the plains of Haridwar, where his son Virendra contested. Virendra lost the election by 1.64 lakh votes, getting 37.6% of the total votes polled. Former CM Trivendra Singh Rawat won the seat for the BJP. “If Harish Rawat ji had contested, it would have been a direct fight between two ex-CMs, and the Congress might have stood a chance of winning,” said a party leader.

The leader also said that a large section of party workers in the Tehri Garhwal Lok Sabha constituency was not in favour of Jot Singh Gunsola as their candidate. Gunsola got only 22% of the votes. In other seats the Congress candidates got 36.43% votes (in Garhwal), 34.61% (Nainital-Udham Singh Nagar) and 29.18% (Almora).