After the fall: Is it the end of the road for Cong, or the time to resurrect? (IANS Column: FairPoint)

The Assembly elections in the five states had one stunning outcome: the irretrievable downslide of the Congress. Sonia Gandhi and her two babies Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra need to comprehend the people's verdict and the moral of the story: It is the end of the road for them if they don't accept reality.

Out of the 690 seats whose fate was decided in the five states, the Congress could manage to win only 55. State-wise, of the 403 seats in Uttar Pradesh, Congress got two; in Punjab, where it was in the power, it won 18 out of 117; in Goa's 40-seater Assembly, Congress managed 11; out of Manipur's 60 seats, it had to be content with just five; and in Uttarakhand, it could manage only 19 out of 70.

On the vote share front, too, the share of the Congress is drastically down. In Uttar Pradesh, the Congress vote percentage is a dismal 2.33 against the BJP's 41.29; Manipur has given only 16.83 per cent to the Congress and 37.83 per cent to the BJP; in Goa, the Congress got 23.46 per cent and the BJP 33.31 per cent; in Punjab the Congress managed 22.98 per cent and the BJP 6.60 per cent. The only saving grace for the Congress is Uttarakhand, where it notched up a decent share of 37.91 per cent, against the BJP's 44.33 per cent.

These figures clearly show the state the Congress is in today and exposes the distrust and displeasure of the masses with the three. Talk to any random person on the road, Rahul Gandhi's name evokes dismissive laughter; worse, his actions and statements are perceived to be not serious. For many, he is a joker who is helping the BJP to create perceptions.

His younger sister, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who was projected as the harbinger of a change in the difficult political terrain of Uttar Pradesh, has been rejected by the people of the state. The people valued Akhilesh Yadav more than her and gave him more seats and votes. The statistics clearly show that the people in Uttar Pradesh have more faith in Akhilesh than Priyanka.

The fact that the Congress vote share is down to just 2 per cent in the state after all the "hard work" and personal attention of Priyanka is a telling comment on her performance. In the last Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, Rahul lost the family bastion to Smriti Irani and this time Priyanka could not retain any of the Assembly segments in another Congress bastion, Rae Bareli, the Lok Sabha seat of Sonia Gandhi.

Punjab's overwhelming vote for the Aam Aadmi Party

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