Narayan Rane after casting his vote on Wednesday

Pune, Oct. 18: A few seniors aged in their 70s and 80s, ruminating on the glory days of the past, seem to be the only people manning the largely empty Congress offices in Maharashtra’s cities.

The trend didn’t start after Wednesday evening’s exit polls predicted a thrashing. Even days before the state voted, Mumbai’s Tilak Bhavan or Pune’s Congress Bhavan appeared to lack the energy the party’s competitors displayed, from the BJP and the Shiv Sena to the Nationalist Congress Party and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena.

At the Pune office, built in 1940 at Mahatma Gandhi’s behest, office secretary Uttam Bhumkar sat looking pensive.

Not a soul barring the 76-year-old appeared in sight in the building or its sprawling acres of greenery. Everybody had left as soon as former Union minister Anand Sharma had addressed the media that evening.

Sharma and Ghulam Nabi Azad had been among the handful of central party leaders to visit the prestigious Pune constituency, but their levels of involvement had left the local Congress officials unhappy.

Azad walked “precisely 100 steps” with a candidate in just one of Pune’s eight seats before hastily taking off because “he said he was getting important calls from Delhi”, a local source said.

Sharma marked his presence with a media interaction and a “chai pe charcha” (discussions over tea) with editors of Marathi newspapers at the home of Anantrao Gadgil, son of legendary spokesperson V.N. Gadgil.

Bhumkar said his biggest regret was Rajiv Gandhi’s decision to lower the voting age to 18.

“When Rajivji had dropped by here once, I frankly told him that we would live to repent this decision,” he said.

“Young people had never been fully drawn to the Congress, except perhaps in the 1984 elections after Indiraji’s death, and that was because of Rajivji. They always went for the communists or the BJP.”

Bhumkar added: “Our NSUI (National Students Union of India) is not what it used to be. Once we had individuals like Gurudas Kamat and Anand Sharma, who did very good work as NSUI activists. Little is left of that legacy today.”

Another local Congress official admitted that barring Narayan Rane, who had joined from the Sena, the party lacked an aggressive leader “capable of answering (Narendra) Modi in kind”.

“It’s no good questioning the number of meetings Modi has addressed, because people want to see and hear him. The mood from the Lok Sabha victory has carried over,” he said.

“My feedback is that the more we run down Modi’s stint in office as Prime Minister, the greater the resolve to vote for the BJP.”

At another Congress office, also named after Lokmanya Tilak, in the heart of the sugar belt in Satara, the half-a-dozen people seated looked and admitted to being mostly of freedom struggle or 1950s vintage.

“You can date us from our attire,” said Ramchandra Nanawade, in his seventies and sporting a “Gandhi cap”.

“The alliance with the NCP finished our party because, in many places, we never saw the Congress symbol for 15 years. The NCP even wanted to appropriate this office but we refused to yield. Now that we are alone, we suddenly find that we are without young workers,” Nanawade said.

The office’s unkempt garden, also running into acres, serves as a park for walkers yearning for fresh air.

Indira Gandhi was the last significant leader to visit the 47-year-old Satara office, inaugurated by the tallest leader Maharashtra’s sugar belt has produced, Yashwantrao Chavan.