Can Kharge resurrect Congress!
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a relentless campaign making “Congress Mukt Bharat” since 2014. His campaign, however, partially succeeded in 2022 as the party became "Gandhi-Mukt Congress" when Mallikarjun Kharge took over its reins. But even the "Gandhi Mukt Congress" experiment may take more time as Sonia Gandhi continues to be chairperson of the UPA and the other two Gandhis are part of the 47-member Steering Committee.
Kharge has a tough task in hand to win Himachal and Gujarat Assembly polls by gearing up Congress' machinery and taking advantage of the anti-incumbency against the BJP. He will also have to resolve the Rajasthan riddle where high command's writ was defied. At 80, Kharge does not inspire the younger generation of voters. But he is a lucky leader who was brought back by Sonia Gandhi from political hibernation and appointed as Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha and now commanding the party. It is yet to be seen how he keeps a fine balance between the senior leaders and newcomers below 50 years of age.
He should know that the Modi-Amit Shah duo is completely different from the Atal-Advani era. The Atal-Advani team did not go beyond a point against the Opposition leaders, particularly against the Gandhis. Rather Atal Behari Vajpayee as PM helped Rahul Gandhi when there was an incident at the Boston airport in the USA. But Modi-Shah followed a tough policy against the Congress and the Nehru- Gandhi family and used every weapon in its armory to ensure that the objective was achieved. The Congress will have to re-invent itself if it wants to fight with Modi who is blaming late Jawaharlal Nehru for the ills India has been facing since 1947. The BJP leadership has cleverly adopted Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel and fully focused on demolishing Nehru. A battery of army is digging out all archival material to paint Nehru as the root cause of all ills that the country is facing today.
BJP's Big Worry
The BJP leaders are a worried lot these days. Perhaps, the leadership had not realized the cascading effects of the faster than expected collapse of the Congress. The top leadership is burning midnight oil to decimate the Aam Aadmi Party as many of its internal surveys have warned of rising Arvind Kejriwal. The BJP’s inner core committee deliberated intensely the other day to contain the rise of AAP. The AAP’s campaign has caught the imagination of people in general and youth in particular. The BJP’s top leadership’s assessment is that the AAP will be a big challenge for the BJP in the 2029 Lok Sabha polls if not in 2024. Therefore, Amit Shah is hell-bent on crushing its rise in states with full force in Delhi, Gujarat and other states. The BJP’s indecision to conduct Delhi’s MCD polls is attributed to this scare. The newly appointed Lieutenant Governor, V K Saxena is firing one salvo a day against Chief Minister Kejriwal. Shockingly, bureaucrats including the Chief Secretary are not listening to the elected government either. In a way, the LG and Chief Secretary are doing what the BJP’s local leadership failed to take on the AAP. Amit Shah recently took the Delhi BJP leaders to task for their utter failure to perform and signaled that four of the sitting Lok Sabha MPs may be denied ticket in 2024. All probe agencies of the Central government are going after not only AAP’s ministers and MLAs but prospective AAP candidates and junior functionaries in states. The massive coordinated anti-AAP drive is aimed at containing Kejriwal’s campaigning in Gujarat where he is making inroads.
