Bharat Jodo Yatra 2.0 is something some analysts were talking about till yesterday. But today's election results have changed the narrative, with Congress losing Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan besides failing to wrest power in Madhya Pradesh. The Chattisgarh loss has surprised the party a great deal, considering that it was considered a safe Congress bastion by political commentators and the party's internal reports. The extent of BJP landslide in MP is another shocker Rahul Gandhi and his comrades will not recover from anytime soon.
With today's results, Bharat Jodo Yatra 2.0 will have to be a low-on-morale exercise, if at all it is taken up. Rahul might be advised to take the Yatra from Karnataka or Telangana, the two States where his party is in power and his cadres are enthusiastic.
The Congress party is in the doldrums because it has failed to read the pulse of the public. It relied on dividing OBC votes in the Hindi belt by raking up the caste census issue. Proportional representation, by which OBCs will get more share in the reservation pie, has been proposed by the party.
If Congress had won MP or Chhattisgarh or both alongside Telangana, the second edition of the Bharat Jodo Yatra would have been launched before the Lok Sabha elections with gusto. But the pet slogans and themes of the Rahul Gandhi team have fallen flat. The party's neglect of organisational weakness is another major handicap.
