VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA
BJP may have its share of inner
party tussle and one upmanship but Congress clearly has the edge when it comes
to leaders exchanging blows in public, physically as well as through their
statements.
The latest came on the same day
last week in the two neighboring States of Punjab and Haryana. In Yamunanagar,
supporters of Union Minister Selja and loyalists of Haryana Chief Minister
Bhupinder Singh Hooda not only abused each other but also exchanged blows. For
a long time, Selja has been in the forefront of a faction in the party which is
against Hooda and alleging discrimination in developmental work. In Punjab , former
Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh raised a banner of revolt against PCC
President Partap Singh Bajwa questioning his style of functioning and
announcement of names for polls through a press statement. After his removal as
the State Congress President, Capt Amarinder has used all tricks in his sleeve
to destabilise Bajwa, going to the extent of writing letters to prove the
alleged links of his successor even with militants and smugglers.
In both Punjab
and Haryana it is not uncommon to find workers hurling shoes, abuses, sticks
and anything that can be used as a missile on each other in their internal
meetings. The presence of senior leaders is never a deterrent, rather a
motivation to target each other. The hooligans in such meetings want to get
noticed by those for whom they are raising their voice, fists and lathis and
invariably get rewarded in the long term when their boss gets a good position
in the Government. In Punjab, some party
meetings have turned into mini battlefields with the workers treating each
other to choicest of Punjabi abuses and hurling anything they find handy at
each other with a zeal which would leave people wondering if they belong to the
same party.
A few years ago, I was covering a
Congress rally at Gohana (Sonepat) in Haryana. At that time a fierce turf war
was being fought between the late Bhajan Lal, who was in Congress then and
Bhupinder Singh Hooda, who was trying to challenge him as the undisputed leader
of the Haryana Congress. In the presence of central leaders, Hooda supporters
shouted down Bhajan Lal and the situation could have taken an ugly turn had it
not been for the presence of senior AICC functionaries. Some of the Hooda
supporters were even armed with black flags which they waived the moment Bhajan
Lal disembarked from his vehicle. This was as if an “enemy” of the Congress had
made a sudden appearance. The fact that Bhajan Lal had been at the helm of
affairs in the state for over a decade was completely lost to the protesting
workers.
Now when Hooda has firmly
established himself as the most acceptable face of the Congress at the State
level, his supporters no longer indulge in such wanton acts. However, rival
factions still fight it out for turf space at local meetings in the presence of
the Chief Minister. When Chaudhary Birender Singh organized a rally in Jind on
August 20, Chief Minister Hooda absented himself though AICC General
Secretaries Shakeel Ahmed and Digvijay Singh participated. If Hooda had
participated, Birender supporters would have obviously heckled him. Similarly,
both Selja and Birender always avoid any official function of Hooda to prevent
it becoming a mini battle field between the supporters of each other.
Ask the Congress leaders about
such reckless acts on the part of the workers and they would say that as long
as long as you raise the slogans of ‘Sonia Gandhi Zindabad’ and Rahul Gandhi
Zindabad’ and remain loyal to the first family of the party, no one minds such
a behavior. Severe infighting and turf battle is not limited to Punjab
and Haryana. In the national Capital, Delhi ,
Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit is battling PCC President JP Aggarwal as well as
AICC General Secretary Ajay Maken, her under study turned bête noire. In fact,
in the last almost 15 years of Dikshit’s tenure, the PCC Presidents always
remained against her whoever it was—Ram Babu Sharma, Chaudhary Prem Singh or
Subhash Chopra.
The battlelines within the
Congress are drawn everywhere, wherever you go in India .
In Himachal Pradesh, no one is openly speaking against Chief Minister Virbhadra
Singh fearing reprisals but PCC chief Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu and two
ministers—GS Bali and Thakur Kaul Singh are against the style of functioning of
the Chief Minister. They are planning their next move deftly. Haryana has
Selja, Birender Singh and Gurgaon MP Rao Inderjit lined up against Hooda. In Chhattisgarh , it is PCC President
Charandas Mahant versus former Chief Minister Ajit Jogi. In Madhya Pradesh, the
internal fight is three fold with Jyotiraditya Scindia versus Kamal Nath versus
Digvijay Singh.
In Tamil Nadu again there are
three players pitched against each other for turf war—Jayanthi Natarajan GK
Wasan and P Chidambaram. How can Kerala
be behind as there are factions of Oommen Chandy and Ramesh Chennithala in the
southern State. In Uttar Pradesh, there is hardly anything to fight for except
the crumbs. But none of the central leaders from the state share a rapport and
can sit together to formulate a winning strategy for the state with Amethi MP
Rahul Gandhi. In Bihar, Congress does not see itself in power for the next two
decades and so there is little question of fighting each other but in
neighboring Jharkhand, a bitter war is being fought amongst the leaders for
ministerial berths and positions in government and they are not leaving any
opportunity to run each other down.
The Congress Vice President has
already issued warning and instructions to all leaders not to indulge in
factional fights but no one is listening. All of them are hailing Sonia and
Rahul but that is only to justify their political moves. All of them have their
own little turfs to protect and the party comes second. A senior leader of the
party had an interesting take on the infighting in Congress. He told me that
when there are 20 leaders in a State, one becomes the PCC President and 19
start working against him and seek his removal. When the PCC President is
finally removed and one from the group of 19 is given the charge, the leader
who has been removed now joins the group of 19 and starts working against the
new incumbent. “This is a typical Congress tradition,” the leader summed up. (August 26, 2013)
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