After the resounding defeat in the recent Haryana Assembly elections, Congress' General Secretary and Haryana in-charge, Deepak Babaria, has offered to resign, taking moral responsibility for the party's dismal showing. The offer comes amid internal party deliberations on the reasons behind the disastrous poll performance, which shattered Congress's hopes of making a comeback after a decade in the Opposition and allowed the BJP to achieve a hat-trick of Assembly elections victory.
The BJP managed to defy anti-incumbency, securing a third consecutive term in Haryana, while the Congress was left scrambling for answers. The BJP's electoral victory, their best-ever in the state, saw them win 48 seats – 11 more than the Congress – leaving little room for the opposition to recover. Smaller players, such as the Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), were decimated, while the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) could only manage two seats.
Congress had heavily relied on Dalit and Jat voters, groups that constitute nearly 20 per cent and 25 per cent of Haryana's population, respectively. However, the BJP made significant inroads into both, leaving the Congress struggling to hold onto its traditional support bases.
The BJP managed to flip eight of the 17 Scheduled Caste (SC) seats, including Nilokheri, Pataudi, Kharkhauda, Hodal, Bawal, Narwana, Israna, and Bawani Khera. The most significant upset came in Hodal, where Haryana Congress chief Udai Bhan lost to BJP's Harinder Singh.
Despite these losses, the Congress held onto the remaining nine SC seats but failed to make any decisive gains. In comparison, the BJP's performance marked an improvement from the 2019 elections, when it won only five SC seats.
Following his party's defeat, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi expressed his disappointment with the election results. In his first reaction, he described the outcome as "unexpected" and said the party was conducting an internal analysis to understand the reasons behind the loss. Mr Gandhi thanked the people of Haryana for their support and promised to continue fighting for "rights, social and economic justice, and the truth."
