Gujarat Congress has plunged into confusion and discontent after suffering defeats in the Visavadar and Kadi Assembly bypolls.
State party chief Shaktisinh Gohil resigned, apparently taking ownership of the disheartening results. Not that the party had high expectations from the polls.
His decision to step down hasn’t helped matters given that the party was planning a major organisational overhaul ahead of the 2027 Assembly elections.
Only two days before the bypoll results, the Congress had completed a key initiative under Sangathan Srijan Abhiyaan, aimed at rebuilding the organisation. As part of this effort, it appointed 40 District Congress Committee (DCC) presidents across Gujarat through a process overseen by All India Congress Committee (AICC) observers. The initiative was conceived as a pilot project to be replicated nationally.
Gohil’s sudden exit, at the very beginning of this rejuvenation process, unsettled many party members who felt that the newly appointed DCC leaders now lacked the leadership and support they needed. One party functionary noted that the seats had never been in the Congress’s grasp, so there was no real expectation of a win. Still, others expressed concern that the resignation sent a discouraging message down the ranks.
Despite his resignation, Gohil maintained that he had been given more autonomy than any GPCC president in the past. He said the pilot for selecting DCC presidents was implemented at his request, and his proposal to host the AICC convention in Gujarat was also approved. He added that he was asked to review the final list of DCC appointments, and said that unlike previous top-down decision-making, this time the views of grassroots workers were actively sought.
Yet, criticisms of the DCC appointment process persisted. A young party leader remarked that the newly appointed DCC chiefs would be unlikely to follow Gohil’s leadership if he had not been involved in their selection. An observer involved in the pilot exercise estimated that only about 30 percent of the appointments were suitable for the role, another 30 percent were completely unqualified, and the remaining 30 percent had been appointed merely due to the absence of alternatives.
If more confirmation is needed of the way the party has regressed, the bypoll results is a living proof.
As reports highlighted, in Visavadar, AAP candidate Gopal Italia not only won but secured a higher vote share than Bhupat Bhayani, AAP’s 2022 winner from the same seat. Visavadar, a Patidar-dominated region, had previously been won by the Congress in 2017 during the Patidar quota agitation. However, the party’s winner Harshad Ribadiya defected to the BJP. In 2022, Ribadiya lost to Bhayani, who later joined the BJP as well. The bypoll outcome suggested a rejection of such defections.
In contrast, Kadi has long been a BJP bastion, and the Congress’s performance remained weak. The party’s vote share dropped by around 8 percent in Visavadar and about 4 percent in Kadi. These losses followed a disastrous 2022 Assembly election in which the Congress secured only 17 out of 182 seats — its worst result in decades — compared to 77 seats in 2017.
Some party leaders claimed that Patidar votes had been polarised. Former Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Paresh Dhanani pointed to an incident where liquor bottles were seized in Visavadar before polling, reportedly based on a tip-off from Italia, and suggested that had he been in Italia’s place, the police would have falsely linked the consignment to him.
A leader from Saurashtra questioned why AAP performed poorly in Kadi if its appeal was truly growing.
A Congress MLA, meanwhile, asserted that the party’s low showing can be explained by its inability to adequately emphasise its social justice and secularism tenets. He maintained that the Congress had long been perceived as the voice of Muslims, Dalits, and tribal people, but had not done anything to further solidify this in either seat, whilst the AAP had avoided such topics.
A former Congress MP criticised the initial list of DCC chiefs for not including any Muslim leaders, saying that it had sent the wrong message — something the party had to later correct by appointing a Muslim leader in the Bharuch DCC.
Within the party, reactions to Gohil’s resignation ranged from empathy to frustration. While some described his decision as abandoning a sinking ship, others questioned why he chose to resign when the party was just beginning its restructuring efforts. A former MLA observed that it was common practice in the Congress to take moral responsibility after a defeat. He recalled how previous leaders, including GPCC chief Amit Chavda and CLP leader Dhanani, had also resigned after the party’s loss in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls — though they had remained in office for 18 months until successors were named.
Gohil reaffirmed that, despite pressure from the party leadership, he would not take the job again. He said that the way the party lost, not the fact that they had previously held the seats, was the crux of the issue. According to a former MP, internal factionalism within the Gujarat Congress and centralized decision-making may have made Gohil feel limited and deprived of his ability to act. Gohil maintained, however, that he had been granted the authority to govern.
Meanwhile, morale among party workers remains low. Former GPCC Mahila Morcha president Jenny Thummar admitted that the organisation lacked direction and said the state leadership was waiting for answers from the high command.
Rahul Gandhi’s frequent comparing of Congress employees to “shaadi ka ghoda” (wedding horses) rather than “race ka ghoda” (racehorses) infuriated many ardent supporters and exacerbated the unhappiness. Despite decades of service, one senior leader claimed the comment made him feel discredited. After central officials rushed in with irrational expectations, he wondered what incentive remained for regular employees to stick with the party.
He also came down heavily on the party’s attitude towards politics, saying that change does not come just through bonhomie alone but has to be fashioned through sweat and hardships.
Some younger leaders, known for leading earlier anti-BJP agitations, expressed their frustration, saying the party in its current form couldn’t even hope to win 50 seats, let alone form a government. One of them asked rhetorically if there was even a single prominent figure that had joined the Congress recently, concluding that the party had failed to inspire.
Adding to the woes is a severe resource crunch. A star campaigner in the Visavadar bypoll revealed that the campaign had a paltry budget of just Rs 20 lakh. It is held that reviving the party from scratch would require at least Rs 300 crore — a sum well beyond their reach.
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