Cantering War Horses

Not all of them are unsung heroes. Rahul Gandhi, who electrified young voters and restored some life back into the party in UP, has received plenty of media attention. Endless hours of airtime were devoted to him but his off-camera role was equally important. He was involved in the nitty-gritty of campaign strategy—from scripting the manifesto to deciding punchlines for its ads.

For Ghulam Nabi Azad who delivered Andhra Pradesh, it's been a hat-trick. In 1999 he engineered Karnataka, J&K last year and now AP. After several rounds of delicate negotiations, he clinched the deal with the TRS—thus ensuring the party's sweep of Telangana. At the time, he was criticised for having been too generous with the sub-regional outfit. Many Congress district committees resigned in protest and veteran Congressmen turned rebels but Azad stuck to his guns. And was proved right.

Prithviraj Chauhan was put in charge of Gujarat, an assignment nobody wanted because the state had been given up for lost. In fact, the Congress had a tough time finding candidates for all the 26 seats. On polling day, when a confident Chauhan said he could deliver up to 12 seats, his claim was greeted with polite scepticism. When the results came in, the nay-sayers were pounding Chauhan's back; that six seats had been wrested from under the chief Sonia-baiter's (Narendra Modi) nose had a special meaning for the party.

Delhi chief minister Sheila Dixit beat local anti-incumbency once again. She delivered six of the capital's seven seats, unseating BJP heavyweights like Jagmohan. Her son, Sandeep, romped home with a staggering margin of over two lakh votes in the admittedly tough East Delhi seat. The BJP has been humbled in Delhi for the first time since 1984.

And then there were the backroom boys: Ahmed Patel, Salman Khursheed and Jairam Ramesh. The cremé-de-la-cremé of the core committee which drew up and monitored the Congress election strategy and turned the campaign around in three months. In January, when the team went into action, political observers predicted the Congress would barely touch three figures. When India Shining hit, the tally went down even further. Spewing statistics and slogans and working 24X7, the backroomers put the zing back. Kapil Sibal helped, attacking the NDA with great sound and fury and making sure the usually lacklustre Congress briefings made it to the next day's newspapers.

It's hard to avoid Ajit Jogi. A near-fatal accident ensured he missed the last few days of campaigning but he still managed to defeat V. C. Shukla by a thumping margin, winning the party's only seat from Chhattisgarh. From zero to hero.