A wake up call for Congress

It is still a bit more than two years left to the 2024 general elections, but it seems that its rumblings have already started making noise in the opposition camp. Mamata Banerjee and her party TMC seem to be on a recruiting spree. With former Goa CM, sizeable leaders from Haryana, and sitting MLAs in Meghalaya being the recent addition to the TMC's bench strength. Before the winter session commenced, Mamata Banerjee met prominent non-Congress opposition leaders. She even took a jibe at Rahul Gandhi's foreign visits without naming him. It was followed by Prashant Kishore's tweet questioning the Gandhi family's so-called right to be the face of the congress party. These recent developments have changed the national political picture.

At its lowest in history, Congress still has a loyal vote share of about 20 percent. In contrast, the others in the opposition camp have their vote share in single digits. Even if you add everyone's vote share or look at the total seat count, it would still be well below Congress's. Even Mamata Banerjee, who is taking on Congress, knows that currently, no one other than Congress can stitch an alliance that will hold BJP at bay. Well, this might be the reason for Congress's arrogance and taking everything for granted. Instead of acting like the adhesive, which is binding parties together, the opposition cohesion is breaking away, taking away a bit of core(Congress's vote share) with it too.

Congress lost almost 96 percent of seats where Congress and BJP fought head-on. Increasingly, trends have shown that Congress's loyal voter base has started shifting to the non-BJP alternative available to them. People jumping ship is an indication that the ship has started to sink. Currently, this seems to be the case with the Congress party. Leaders are getting disillusioned and have serious doubts about where the party is headed, and hence you see them deserting the party.

Democracy is all about alternatives, so either you be the one or someone else will be. If Congress doesn't make the required course correction, its loyal vote base will metamorphose, eventually devouring Congress itself. The likes of Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal catapulting themselves to the national stage and their parties making inroads into other parts of the country is filling up the void that Congress has created; it is just the beginning of the metamorphosis and maybe the beginning of the end for Congress.

Mamata Banerjee has sounded an alarm for the Congress leadership. Now it is up to them whether to snooze that alarm or turn it off.