VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA
The warning bells are loud and
clear. The results of the bye-elections for the Tehri and the Jangipur Lok
Sabha seats suggest a countrywide trend, an undercurrent against the policies
of the UPA Government and also against a series of acts of omission and commission,
sending the Congress scurrying for cover.
If Congress does not read the
ominous signs and take corrective measures in the next year and half, the
writing is there on the wall. But the problem is that the grand old party
cannot or rather does not want to hear the warning bells, does not want to look
at the mirror and do some serious introspection. Medication starts only when
the patient agrees with the diagnosis but here Congress wants to kill the
doctor who diagnosed the disease. It wants to shoot the messenger even as the
message is too obvious for everyone to see.
The mood clearly is something
like 1989 when the Bofors issue brought down the mighty Rajiv Gandhi Government
and before that in 1977 when imposition of the Emergency led to the crystallisation
of the anti-Congress forces on one platform leading to the ouster of Congress
for the first time.
In Uttarakhand, Tehri by-poll
result is not a defeat for the Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna but clearly a no
confidence vote against the UPA Government. The seat may have been vacated by
Bahuguna and he may have led from the front to ensure the victory of his son
Saket, but the series of expose ever since the UPA came to power in 2009, did
him in. What makes the matters worse is that almost every single day one or the
other corruption charges against Congress Ministers is being made.
Even as the din over the Coalgate
and charges against Robert Vadra had yet to die down, there was charge against
Law Minister Salman Khurshid about financial impropriety in the family run
trust which received money from the Central Government. This was followed by
charges against Virbhadra Singh when he was the Union Steel Minister on
receiving kickbacks and alleged involvement in the selling of iron scrap.
Remember, the same Virbhadra Singh had to resign from the Manmohan Singh
Cabinet when a court in Shimla framed charges against him in the CD case. So it
is a hat-trick of charges against Singh.
What has made the matters worse
is the perception amongst the people that the party is extremely tolerant to
corruption. The same Virbhadra is the Chief Ministerial candidate of the party
in poll bound Himachal Pradesh, after being made the PCC chief two months
before the elections. The message has gone not only in Himachal Pradesh but
also rest of the country that come what may, the party will not take action
against any tainted leader and instead would reward them with the position they
want. Virbhadra wanted to become the PCC chief before elections so that he can
get tickets for maximum of his supporters and he got what he wanted.
Political discourse has been
reduced to such a comical level that instead of being on the defensive, Singh
has been charging his political opponents of corruption and bragging that such
issues do not affect the people and their voting preferences. Congress party is
full of lawyers, including many in the Cabinet, but I don’t know how many of
them would buy the argument which Virbhadra is placing in his defence. The
tainted Himachal leader claims that he uses the initials “VS” and not “VBS” as
mentioned in the diaries seized by the IT Department from Ispat Industries in
which there is an entry of a payment of Rs2.28 crore to one “VBS”.
The result of Tehri indicates
towards the malaise which has set in the 127-year-old party. Jangipur in West
Bengal only confirmed it. The seat was vacated by Pranab Mukherjee
after being elected as the first President of the country from West
Bengal . His son, Abhijit Mukherjee just managed to win by a
slender margin of over 2,500 votes while the margin of his father was 1.28 lakh
votes. Abhijit knows that the next election which he will fight from the seat
is not far away and just a year and half from now and the situation would only
become difficult the way erosion of votes from the Congress has taken place. I
hope Congress does not argue that the people of Jangipur are ungrateful and
should have voted for the son of the first citizen of the country in the name
of “Bengali honour”.
The erosion of the vote base of
the Congress did not start all of a sudden. A series of high profile cases saw
the involvement of several Congress leaders in scams. The big ticket scams
started with the Commonwealth Games which led party MP Suresh Kalmadi to Tihar
Jail in New Delhi . The investigation
into the Games scam has come to a halt now. People are still wondering if
Kalmadi did it all alone and wasn’t helped by the Delhi Government at all. A
little earlier, the Madhu Koda scam broke out in which the party made an
Independent MLA as Chief Minister of mineral rich Jharkhand, reaped the
benefits and then left Koda high and dry in jail.
Then came the 2G scam which saw
Cabinet Minister A Raja in jail and egg on the faces of several others,
including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, under whose nose the entire scam was
carried out. If the corruption cases were not enough, inept handling of Anna
Hazare and Baba Ramdev made the Government unpopular and exposed its ability to
handle sensitive issues administratively.
Coalgate was next and no one knows
where the investigations will stop if done in a free and fair manner. Robert
Vadra was the bombshell which was waiting to explode. However, hard the Cabinet
Ministers and the party spokespersons tried in television studios, the
hollowness of their claims was there before the entire country to see. They
were defending the indefensible. No one will give me or any common citizen
(mango people of banana republic), an overdraft or unsecured loan of even Rs100
what to talk of lakhs or crores. This is only the second time when the first
family of the Congress has faced charges, the first was against Rajiv Gandhi in
the Bofors case.
In between, there was the Adarsh
society scam in Mumbai and several small scams. Now you have the Salman
Khurshid and Virbhadra Singh episodes. There are many more happening which
could come to limelight anytime now. Selling natural resources and change in
land use have become tickets to wealth for many, those in the Congress have
mastered it while those in other parties are learning the tricks fast.
Given the sentiments, reflected
through Tehri and Jangipur, it is for the opposition parties to cash it. BJP
wants to be voted to power through default and not through aggressive campaign.
Remember, the Vadra issue was brought in public domain by Arvind Kejriwal and
the 2G and Coalgate scams by the CAG. Congress may be in a self annihilation
drive right now but if the principal opposition party does not take
proactive political measures and builds
a confederation of regional parties around it, the scam tainted UPA could
bounce back. (October 15, 2012)
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