In what is being described as a collapse of its urban base, the Congress on Friday touched a new low in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections, expecting to win a mere 19 out of the 227 seats.
The party had contested 152 seats in the elections to the country's richest civic body, leaving the rest to its allies Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA), Rashtriya Samaj Paksha and Republican Party of India (Gavai faction).
In 2017, when the last BMC elections were held, the Congress had won 31 seats.
The trends on Friday showed that the alliance with the Prakash Ambedkar-led VBA, RSP and RPI (Gavai) did not help the Grand Old Party, with analysts terming it a strategic misstep rather than a vote-multiplier.
With the BJP and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena on their way to clinching the control of the BMC from the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, the Congress has been reduced to a marginal player.
Before the high-stakes elections, the Congress decided not to have a tie-up with its Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) partners Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray and Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar. It feared that joining hands with the Shiv Sena-UBT and Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena would alienate its North Indian and minority vote banks.
But the strategy seemed to have failed, political observers noted.
Instead, the party faced a double whammy as the BJP aggressively consolidated the non-Marathi Hindu votes, while the Shiv Sena (UBT)-MNS retained a significant chunk of anti-BJP votes, leaving the Congress squeezed in the middle.
In many traditional strongholds, the Congress lost ground to both the BJP and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena due to linguistic and religious polarisation and counter-polarisation.
Political observers also attributed the Congress' rout to chronic infighting and a lack of a cohesive campaign narrative. While the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Thackeray cousins ran high-octane campaigns, focused on infrastructure and Marathi identity, respectively, the Congress struggled to find a coherent theme.
"The Congress in Mumbai has become a party of individual pocket-boroughs rather than a unified force," said a political analyst.
"Without a clear face to take on the ruling BJP-led Mahayuti or a distinct agenda beyond 'opposing everyone,' it failed to inspire even its traditional supporters," he said.
More alarming for the Congress is the apparent shift in its core constituency. Preliminary data suggests a significant fragmentation of the Muslim and Dalit votes.
AIMIM, Samajwadi party and the NCP led by Ajit Pawar cut into the Congress's traditional support base.
The result is likely to trigger a fresh round of demands for a leadership change. The party is currently led by MP Varsha Gaikwad in the city. For a party that once gave Mumbai its mayors and shaped its post-independence growth, the slide to 15 seats is not just an electoral setback but a signal of its growing urban irrelevance.
The alliance with the VBA was expected to consolidate Dalit votes for the Congress, but Prakash Ambedkar's party lacked booth-level machinery and resources required for transfer of votes, observers said.
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