India’s Congress gains key foothold with state polls win

India's embattled Congress party won big in a southern state election this weekend, exceeding expectations and gaining fresh momentum to take on entrenched Prime Minister Narendra Modi in national elections next year, top politicians and analysts said.

At the same time, they cautioned that Congress' victory on Saturday in Karnataka state, home to the booming tech hub of Bengaluru, was largely due to local factors.

The popular Modi's strongman image and Hindu polarisation strategy, they said, would likely power his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to victory in upcoming elections in the heartland states and nationally.

But for the beleaguered opposition party, which won fewer than 10 percent of the 545 seats in parliament's lower house in 2019, the win provides a foothold to re-establish itself as a political force to be reckoned with in the world's largest democracy.

"This is an opportunity for Congress to enhance state efficiencies in Karnataka, build a new governance model and showcase that to the country," said Prithvi Datta Chandra Shobhi, a political commentator who teaches at Krea University in southern India.

For the near term, however, he added: "These results have no bearing on the 2024 elections, they don't help us to predict what might happen either in Karnataka or nationally so far as Congress' chances are concerned."

The impressive win in Karnataka, the BJP's only stronghold in the south and where Modi invested personally in campaigning, was touted by Congress officials as the beginning of its comeback nationally.

"This is an amazing beginning," said Rajeev Gowda, the head of research at Congress and a former federal lawmaker. "The momentum is picking up for a fight back ... Each state victory can help keep the momentum."

The bread-and-butter issues of unemployment and inflation that Congress highlighted in Karnataka, Gowda said, are critical issues nationally as well, especially as the Indian economy's recovery after the pandemic was uneven.

Milind Deora, a former federal minister from Congress, said there was new momentum after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's 135-day cross-country march to revive the party, a win last November in Himachal Pradesh state, and now Karnataka.

"We need to adapt these learnings to every election-going state in 2023 and more importantly to parliamentary elections next year," he said. "Nothing is impossible in politics."