Rahul Gandhi

New Delhi, May 11: In the end, Rahul Gandhi was perhaps more honest with himself and the Congress than were most party leaders in Uttar Pradesh and Delhi.

The Amethi MP repeatedly said his roadshows were unlikely to work any magic in this election and the party must wait to see his “labour” bear fruit.

But the Congress, tied to the wishful thought that the Gandhi charisma would make up for poor organisation, made no secret of its hope of doubling the 2002 tally of 25 seats.

The vote share would increase, party leaders insisted, and the Congress would emerge kingmaker in a hung Assembly.

But Mayavati swept the polls and till late this evening, the Congress had won just 22 seats, three less than last time.

Why did Rahul flop? Although nobody would say a word today, some possible explanations can be gleaned from the feedback that trickled in over the last week along with suggestions of a Mayavati surge.

One, the young man had started too late. Just over a month of campaigning wasn’t enough: he should have hit the streets six months ago.

Two, the organisation, with the party out of power for nearly 17 years, was in a shambles. Congress leaders were busy striking deals with whoever was in power while the Delhi “paratroopers” were clueless about what was happening on the ground.

But many others believe that the clues to Rahul’s flop show lie deeper — in the Congress’s failure to come to grips with the changes in Uttar Pradesh society in the past two decades.

As the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party addressed the voters’ aspirations — empowerment and upward mobility — the Congress stayed frozen in time. It kept hoping that Rahul’s dimpled smile, Priyanka Vadra’s easy charm and Sonia Gandhi’s “renunciation of power” would translate into votes.

Midway through Rahul’s campaign, the question was already being discreetly asked whether his caste- and religion-neutral messages were touching a chord in a polity dominated by sectional interests.

Even Rahul’s controversy-seeking statements that made headlines didn’t have the impact at the booths the party had hoped for.

The young MP said his late father would never have allowed the Babri Masjid to be demolished. But voters perhaps remembered that it was Rajiv Gandhi, apparently misled by his advisers, who allowed the mosque’s locks to be opened for worship by Hindus and later facilitated the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s shilanyas.

The overwhelming feeling was that apart from invoking his lineage and political pedigree, the MP had little to say.

Of the 63 constituencies Rahul visited, the Congress is learnt to have won only six. Most of its sitting MLAs lost; and insiders ruefully acknowledged today that those who won owed little to the Gandhi scion. They had just got the caste math right or had entrenched bases or had delivered on their promises.

The most charitable concession to Rahul was that his whistle-stop tour had “provided that extra push”.

In Sonia’s Rae Bareli Lok Sabha constituency, the party lost the town seat to Independent candidate Akhilesh Singh. The Gandhis are particularly bitter with Singh because he had won on a Congress ticket in 2002, then broken away to float his own party and finally moved over to the Mulayam Singh Yadav camp.

In 2004, while campaigning for her mother, Priyanka had warned against his “machinations” at meeting after meeting, urging workers to see that not a single flag or poster of Singh could be put up. Her exhortation had worked then but this time she couldn’t do a thing against Singh.