It is introspection time for Congress President Rahul Gandhi who lost his ‘family seat’ of Amethi to BJP’s Smriti Irani. That the party managed to go from 44 in 2014 to 52 in 2019 is hardly anything to celebrate when the party president had to go for a ‘safe seat’ Wayanad to secure his entry into the Lok Sabha.
And while he reflects over what went wrong, in India or at a secret location abroad, here is a suggestion for him. Even if he does not put down his papers himself, other than firing his social media head, who tweets on Rahul’s behalf like a sixteen-year-old high on SnapChat filters, Rahul Gandhi should promote his data analytics head.
His data, unlike like the dubious database with faulty ‘fact-checker’ where he was a found trustee of, is not quite off the mark.
In January this year, he gave an interview to The Hindu where he had said that the BJP will not win any of the large states it had won in 2014.
In his interview to The Hindu, Chakravarty had predicted that his ‘data’ will spring a surprise in Uttar Pradesh. He had come to this conclusion after looking at every seat in detail and every social combination and analysing the sentiment of voters who had voted for BJP in 2014.
BJP did not just win most of the states it had won in 2014 elections, but it even won more. The BJP and its allies managed to get a bigger victory. In Bihar, the NDA won 39 out of 40 seats, completely wiping out fodder scam convict Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD. Even Lalu’s daughter could not win the Pataliputra seat she contested from.
In West Bengal, where the BJP had won 2 seats in 2014, the party managed to secure as many as 18 seats. The TMC is reduced to 22 seats and Congress managed 2, two seats less than previous elections.
Regarding his prophecy in Uttar Pradesh, Chakravarty says they had analysed voters’ sentiments, especially those who voted for the BJP in 2014. No wonder in 2019 the party president had to contest from a ‘safe seat’ of Wayanad because the seat which has been a family bastion for decades appeared difficult to retain. And as results show, he was correct. Rahul Gandhi lost Amethi by over 50,000 votes to BJP’s Smriti Irani.
Chakravarty further stated in January that the BJP victory in 2014 was a ‘black swan’ which could not be repeated. This is also turning out to be true since the BJP not only repeated it but even managed to outdo itself in terms of voter share. The ‘black swan’ managed to get almost 50% vote share, way above the 31% it got in 2014. One out of every two people who voted, voted for Modi. Chakravarty again proven right.
He had further said that Maharashtra was the ‘angriest’ state as per their survey. The BJP-Shiv Sena alliance in the state has won 41 out of the 48 seats in the state, thereby repeating their 2014 performance. However, Congress which got two seats in 2014, could retain only one. On the brighter side, it is only 50% loss.
It wasn’t as bad as Rajasthan, where there is a Congress government in the state, but it could not deliver a single seat in the Lok Sabha. However, it would be a good idea to ask him about the data in his possession which showed that the BJP could not ‘reverse the tide’ in Rajasthan. Because, clearly, the data didn’t work out there. But he is kind of known to have a divine vision where, much like how IndiaSpend works ‘magic’ with numbers for the shady hate tracker.
@tavleen_singh your Mint interview portras you as arrogant and dismissive of genuine questions. Unsure now about buying Durbar. @mint_ed
— Praveen Chakravarty (@pravchak) December 2, 2012
Like this one time where he decided not to buy a book because he formed his opinion about it based on the author’s interview.
Hence, maybe it is time for the Congress President to promote Chakravarty so that by the time the youth leader becomes a veteran leader, he could suggest how the next generation of Nehru-Gandhi-Vadra family could revive the grand old party.
