NEW DELHI: After its shock defeat in Haryana, Congress is faced with the unenviable project of picking its new team of functioanries in the state which will signal that the party has learnt its lessons.
Sources said Congress has realised the need to throw the net wide to increase its social appeal, amid repeated evidence that its support base has stagnated to the dominant Jat-Jatav combine, while the rest of the communities – Yadavs, Punjabis and Brahmins, among others – are being polarised against it.
The defeat under Bhupinder Hooda has served this reminder, which was known in the past, but was overruled as strategists felt anti-incumbency against the governing BJP, around issues of bread-butter, governance, and aspirations, would trump the social considerations.
Sources said Congress will decide on the new team by picking a combination – state president and legislature party leader – which would signal an olive branch to the communities outside the party’s base. But two crucial considerations make the final decision a tricky issue.
While moving forward to widen the social umbrella, the party does not believe it can simply jettison the old team, lest it disturb the existing support base which, even in the losing cause, brought Congress at par with BJP in vote share and also a healthy tally of 37 seats.
And, if the dominant faction agrees for a compromise, the testing dimension would be the need to project functionaries from outside the support base who have their own identity, as against “proxies” of the old guard with the fig leaf of being from the desired communities that the party is seeking to woo.
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