Subhechcha Ganguly 
Congress leaders involved in managing the election contend that internal conflicts and overconfidence hindered the campaign centered on the party’s seven guarantees. A week before the polling on October 5, a young Congress candidate from a constituency near Faridabad urgently called a central leader, expressing frustration that no state-level leader had come to support his campaign.
Halfway through the campaign, a senior Congress leader joined a few rallies alongside former Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda, the key figure in the party’s efforts. Noticing a decline in attendance, he recommended to the state leadership that they involve women in every village to connect with voters and promote the seven guarantees the party was offering—a strategy that had proven successful in Karnataka and then in Telangana. However, this suggestion was ignored.
Congress leaders involved in poll management believe that internal conflicts and overconfidence negatively impacted the campaign surrounding the party’s seven guarantees, which included ₹2000 per month for women and the creation of 2 lakh government jobs.
“In Punjab, prior to the 2022 elections, the Aam Aadmi Party effectively utilized young supporters and women to reach out to households and enroll families for various benefits. We did not achieve this to the same extent because we were overly confident in our victory. Our campaigns primarily concentrated on bringing Hooda to power after a decade of BJP rule,” they stated.
