Elevation of Rahul Gandhi

Amit Kushari (IAS Retd)
The elevation of Rahul Gandhi as Congress President is undoubtedly a significant event for the Congress party workers but it may not be an important event for the country as a whole. This is entirely an internal matter of the Congress party and the Congressmen have to decide as to who will be their new leader after Sonia Gandhi,who has stepped into her 70s and does not maintain good health. For the Congressmen, the choice of leader is quite limited….it has to be either Rahul or Priyanka or Priyanka’s son who is still under 10. The Congress President has to be from the Gandhi family for reasons I do not know for sure. Only Congressmen can explain the reason for this. Perhaps a person from a different family could create rifts and jealousies in the party ….. or their could be some secret financial angles in the matter. Even Robert Vadra cannot be considered for this post, because being a son-in-law he is not related by blood and perhaps cannot be trusted fully. Otherwise Rajesh Pilot’s son, Madhav Rao Scindia’s son or Jitendra Prasada’s son would have perhaps been a better alternative. But that is not to be.
The HRD Minister, Smt Smiriti Irani, seems to be very elated that with the elevation of Rahul Gandhi, the BJP is going to see better days. Her happiness is quite misplaced. The “acche din” of BJP ended with the Lok Sabha election of 2014 and the Assembly elections of Maharashtra, Haryana and Jammu. The Modi wave was over by Jan 2015 and thereafter BJP did badly in each and every Assembly election except Assam. In Delhi BJP’s vote share decined from 39% to 38% whereas AAP’s vote share rose from 36% to 52%……as a result of which AAP stormed into power wth 67 seats against BJP’s 3. Even the Chief Ministerial face of BJP, Mrs Kiran Bedi, had to face a humiliating defeat. In the Bihar Assembly elections, BJP’s vote share decreased by 5% and since the opposition was united against BJP, it could get only 58 seats in an Assembly of about 230. In Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry BJP could not open account and in Kerala it won just 1 seat, although the RSS did ‘prachaar’ work for them extensively. In Bengal BJP won only 3 seats out of 294 and their voting percentage actually came down from 17% to 10%. BJP could not face the might of Mamata Banerjee who did extensive development work, without imposing any significant taxes on the people and occupied 71% of all Assembly seats. BJP’s West Bengal face, Shri S.N.Singh, who raised a loud slogan,”Bhaag Mamata Bhaag!” was put to total shame. Now he has been put to a further disgrace since it has come to light now that he exchanged 100s of phone calls with Mr. Bhandari who has been summoned by the Enforcement Directorate for shady arms deals and property deals in London with ‘damaadji’, Mr Robert Vadra. He has put Mr. Modi to shame who has, so far, a brilliant record of honesty and dedicated hard work. BJP has also been put to shame by the Maharashtra Revenue Minister, who allegedly took land worth 40 crores for only Rs. 3 crores.
BJP leaders must realise that their ‘acche din’ do not depend on who becomes President in the Congress party. They will be judged by the people by their own actions in the Central Government. So many extra taxes are being imposed everyday that people have started saying that BJP has declared a war against the common man of India. PM Modi, who was worshipped by the people of India even a year ago, as ‘ Hindu Hriday Samrat’,(ruler of Hindu hearts) or as an incarnation of Lord Vishwanath is now being called Hindu Aurangzeb, who is imposing fresh ‘jizya’ taxes on the people on a daily basis. The middle classes are now totally alienated from the BJP and this may result in 7 to 8 % loss in votes. Add to this 3% anti incumbency loss. BJP got 31% votes in 2014 general elections. If this figure comes down to 21% in 2019, it could mean that the BJP figures in Lok Sabha would be just 160-180 seats. These lost 110 seats would go towards regional parties and Congress. Out of these 110 seats around 70 seats are likely to go to the Congress because in the major chunk of the Hindi heartland there is no strong regional party. Every loss of BJP would be a gain for the Congress and even if Rahul Gandhi proves to be a big zero as a President….. the Congress tally in the Lok Sabha would be around 110 to 120, without any effort. This will be a gift to the Congress from the centre’s Finance Ministry. Therefore, I foresee, that with all the drawbacks of a dynastic party and even with an ineffective President, the Congress may come surprisingly close to power in 2019, as it happened in 2004. Most people were shocked when Vajpayee lost the elections in 2004. He was a most respected Prime Minister who gave India the best governance by keeping a tight leash over inflation. But still he lost notwithstanding the glittering ads on TV about India Shining. He lost for mainly 2 reasons….Muslims got frightened by the Gujrat riots and the middleclass got alarmed by his pro business financial policies. The bank rates were lowered to 7% hitting the retired people very hard and new entrants in government service were denied normal pension. This is what happens when the Government loses touch with the people and starts celebrating anniversaries through glittering programmes on the TV. The people who are already very annoyed, get further insulted by these TV programmes. When the EVM machines are ultimately opened and counted, the leaders go into shock and disbelief.
We still have 3 years to go for the next elections and the Government still has a lot of time to change the minus 10% trend to a positive one. For this, not only good work has to be done, but voters must be able to see all the good work with their own eyes. All taxes have to be reduced, new fast trains have to be introduced, school children have to be given bicycles, college students have to be given laptops, polygamy and triple talaq for Muslims have to be stopped, people like Dawood Ibrahim, Vijay Mallya, Hafiz Sayed, Masood Azhar have to brought to India alive, visible efforts have to be made to start the construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya ( beside a magnificent mosque also), the minorities should be able to see clearly that they are not harassed by unproductive laws like beef ban. All this is very difficult to achieve but to attain the sweet victory all this has to be completed before 2019. Only then will BJP be able to celebrate the promotion of Rahul Gandhi, as desired by the HRD Minister, Smriti Irani. Otherwise Rahul Gandhi will take all the credit, although he may not deserve it.
(The author is former Financial Commissioner J&K
Feedback to the author at 09748635185 or amitkus@hotmail.com)

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