VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA
It seems AICC General Secretary
Digvijay Singh is setting the political agenda for the Congress with one remark
or the other every six months. He is the only leader of the party to take a
stand on a given issue, often ambiguous, which only creates further confusion
all around. At the end of the day, after several rounds of the party
disassociating itself from Singh’s statement, it is back to square one. No one
gets any wiser.
When the former Madhya Pradesh
Chief Minister on a “electoral sanyas” for 10 years ever since the Congress
lost the state to BJP’s Uma Bharti in 2003, decried the concept of two power
centres—Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi—and advised heir apparent Rahul Gandhi
that the model should not be emulated, there has been a storm in the party.
Another General Secretary,
Janardan Dwivedi, who is also the head of the media department and considered a
miser with words, comes in the picture and claims what he says is the “official
stand” of the party and what Singh says is “unofficial” and personal
remarks. Dwivedi, the Rajya Sabha member
from Delhi , says the dual power
centre has worked well for the party and could be a model for the future also.
Now, the problem is whom should
the people and the Congress workers believe—Singh or Dwivedi. Had the party
snubbed Singh and suspended him from the party for taking a stand which is
contrary to that of the official stand, people would have believed Dwivedi. But
nothing of that sort happened. In fact, Singh went on and stated that he has
not taken back his words. So you now have two versions on the model of dual
centres of power—one of Singh and the other of Dwivedi.
It is now upto party President
Sonia Gandhi or Vice President Rahul Gandhi to clear the stand as only these
two leaders are senior in party hierarchy than Singh or Dwivedi. But given the
ambivalence of the Congress on a lot of issues, it is extremely unlikely that
they would ever clear the stand. While the Congress President hardly speaks and
never addresses a press conference except in the rarest of rare case, Rahul has
deliberately kept himself aloof from nitty gritty of politics as he has more or
less emerged as a social theorist rather than a politician which he actually
is.
Or is it a case of floating the
proverbial test balloon? Singh theorises on something, floating the balloon to
test the political impact on the bidding of someone. His statements on handling
of Maoist violence, taking up the case of terror accused from Azamgarh or
dubbing the Batla House encounter as fake came in the recent past. After the
statements, the party big wigs watch the reaction carefully, let the debate
continue endlessly and witness the
confusion spread all across the political spectrum. Often, it is Dwivedi who disassociates the
party from the statements of Singh. At the end of it, no one is wiser, neither
the party nor the people who are following the politics of the party but a new
theory gets into the political vocabulary.
Juxtapose it with the recent
statements of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and you get a clearer picture of
the deliberate attempts to create confusion. The PM says he is neither in nor
out of the prime ministerial race in 2014. "I am not ruling it in, I am
not ruling it out," he said. Obviously, you cannot draw any meaning or
sense out of the statement and it is simply status quoism and stating the
obvious. He also describes the debate on
dual power centres as the creation of media and a useless debate. Is there any
clarity anywhere? Isn’t there more confusion? Will anyone in Congress ever
stand up and answer in a simple yes or no.
Even Rahul Gandhi, neither
commits or denies anything. Interacting with the industry leaders in a much
publicized event, he said the question of his becoming prime minister was
irrelevant. "It is irrelevant...all smoke," the 42-year old Amethi MP
said. But again, why don’t you say that you won’t become Prime Minister ever or
would become one day. No one can decipher what he means from the statement made
at the CII.
I remember the press conference at the AICC
headquarters in 2009 when the Congress was releasing its manifesto. Both
Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi were present. But it was only after a series of
direct questions that the Congress President said that Singh would be the prime
ministerial candidate of the party. Remember, he had completed five years on
the trot in the job and the party was practically forced to take a stand on the
issue. Never had the party ever committed itself on declaring a prime
ministerial or a chief ministerial candidate in the elections.
Even as there is enough fodder
for the debate to rage on for the next few months, Minister and party’s face in
TV debates, Manish Tiwari coined a new phrase saying that the
"trinity" of Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi will lead
the Congress in the next Lok Sabha elections. "We will go to the people
with this 'Trimurti', the Ludhiana MP and Information and Broadcasting Minister
said in an interview. For nine years,
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has given us good governance and Congress
president Sonia Gandhi has held the party together. Now, Rahul Gandhi has
breathed life into the youth and invigorated the grassroots, said Tiwari.
So has the debate on two power
centres in Congress, started by Digvijay Singh become infructuous? Instead of
dual power centre, now there is the third centre also which is equally
important and Rahul has got into the role effectively after becoming Vice
President in the party’s Jaipur conclave early this year. Or will Dwivedi again
say that what Tiwari said was his personal opinion and the party had nothing to
do with it. Obviously, Dwivedi would not say anything of that sort as Tiwari,
also a lawyer by training, stated the de facto position in the Congress of
three power centres ever since Rahul joined politics and became an MP from
Amethi a decade ago.
Coming back to the official stand
of party, reflected in Dwivedi’s statement that the dual centre of power can be
a model for future also, do we believe that the dual centre could be Sonia
Gandhi as party President and Rahul Gandhi as Prime Minister if the party is
voted back to power in the next Lok Sabha polls, whenever it is held in
November this year or in April-May 2014. Or does Dwivedi mean that the
Sonia-Manmohan model would continue beyond 2014 if fortune indeed favours the
grand old party.
I also wonder what would happen
if the Congress loses the Lok Sabha polls and sits in the Opposition. In that
case, clearly Manmohan Singh would be out of equation as he cannot become an
office-bearer in Congress and would no longer remain a power centre. There
would be only two centres of power in that eventuality—the Congress President
and the Vice President. (April 8, 2013)
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