VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA
Sensing the worst defeat ever and
perhaps a double digit figure, the 128-year-old party has reacted and given
indications that it is out of slumber and ready to take on the BJP. In a
belated decision, an aggressive Congress decided to field most of its truant
but senior leaders who have so far been reluctant to contest elections and
prefer to be in the limelight through the Rajya Sabha route.
One could have never imagined
Ambika Soni contesting a Lok Sabha election from Anandpur Sahib in Punjab .
Since the late 1970s when she was in the youth Congress and a close aide of
Sanjay Gandhi, perhaps for the first time the thought of contesting polls
crossed her mind. I am sure, she would never have contested the polls but for
the firm stand of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi.
For a long time, she has been
happily getting Rajya Sabha nomination, one term after the other. She has been
the political secretary of the Congress president, former Union Minister and
now AICC general secretary — all without a victory in the battle of ballots.
But when Rahul cracked the whip, she was forced out of slumber to think about
her political career. Contesting from Anandpur Sahib obviously was done at the
last moment as the party had already given its ticket to the sitting MP Ravneet
Singh Bittu. So there you have a senior Congress leader forced to contest polls
in the new dispensation which is emerging in Congress.
Soni is not alone. She has
company in former Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh. Amarinder tried all
tricks in the book to avoid contesting from Amritsar
against BJP heavyweight Arun Jaitley. Just read his statement and you fill find
how reluctant he was in contesting the polls — happy as he was issuing one
press statement after the other and taking pot shots at state Congress chief
Partap Singh Bajwa regularly.
Again, Rahul cracked the whip and
forced Amarinder to go to the battlefield. The former Punjab Chief Minister’s
silly excuses did not work and even as he wanted to flee the battlefield, he
was forcefully sent back. Undoubtedly, Amarinder is the tallest leader of
Congress in Punjab and the party could not have found a
bigger name to tie down Jaitley in Amritsar .
Though, six of the nine assembly segments in Amritsar parliamentary
constituency has MLAs of either the SAD or BJP, Amarinder only can give a tough
fight to Jaitley, who too is contesting the first polls of his life — a
similarity which he shares with Ambika Soni.
So in Punjab
you have the husband contesting from Amritsar
and the wife Preneet Kaur from Patiala .
Soon, there will a by-election for the Assembly seat which Amarinder vacates
and there would be no prizes for guessing that it will be his son Raninder who
will contest the polls, making it three from the family. But then, whether it
promotes dynasty or not, what is certain is that the new aggressive stand of
the central leadership forces Amarinder back in the battlefield from where he
had fled citing all reasons.
Similarly, Punjab PCC chief Bajwa
wanted to sit out this time realising that even in 2009 polls, he won by a
narrow margin against BJP’s Vinod Khanna when the tide was in favour of the
UPA. He was perhaps eyeing the post of Chief Minister of Punjab
after the 2017 Assembly polls when he expressed his reluctance to contest
polls. Again, the whip forces him to retract and fight the polls. So both
Amarinder and Bajwa would contest and would not be able to sabotage the
prospects of each other.
But another senior leader Manish
Tewari is extremely reluctant to contest from Ludhiana .
The reasons are not far to seek — most of the local Congress workers are
against him, he is facing anti incumbency as an MP along with that of the UPA
as he was one of the most well known faces of the party and the government,
there are three formidable candidates in the fray and Ludhiana has become a
four-cornered contest. He could not get nomination from Chandigarh
which is relatively a safe seat for the Congress and so he is sulking. Well,
officially he is not well and I am sure he must have shown his health certificate
to his party president and vice-president to wriggle out of a contest from Ludhiana .
I am not privy to his health certificate so I cannot comment on his fitness to
contest polls.
In neighbouring Himachal Pradesh,
perhaps the Congress forgot its senior leader and Union Minister Anand Sharma —
a permanent face of the Rajya Sabha for decades. Congress was finding it
difficult to find a candidate against BJYM president Anurag Thakur from
Hamirpur and it had to import an Independent MLA into party fold to field
against the sitting BJP MP. Rajinder Singh Rana, who has been given party
ticket from the BJP bastion of Hamirpur, is no match to Thakur, son of former
Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal. As election in Himachal Pradesh is in May,
there is enough time for the party to reconsider its decision and field Sharma
from Hamirpur.
Interestingly, Anand Sharma has
been crying hoarse from the rooftop showing his interest in taking on Narendra
Modi from Benares . But then why not volunteer to contest
from your home State Himachal Pradesh in Hamirpur? Obviously, a defeat against
Modi in Benares would make him a ‘martyr’ and keep alive
his political career while a defeat in Hamirpur would relegate him to the
footnotes of contemporary Congress history.
Though Sharma may have been
forgotten temporarily by the new aggressive leadership in Congress, Ghulam Nabi
Azad was not. He has enjoyed political power and perks all his life without
bothering to get into the heat and dust of electoral politics. But this time,
for a change, the Rajya Sabha regular who detests contesting polls, will be
seeking votes in Udhampur.
There are more leaders in the
Congress who clearly have a preference for the Rajya Sabha to the Lok Sabha. If
you leave aside Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, political secretary to Congress
president, Ahmed Patel is a prominent in the list. He hails from Gujarat ,
has been amongst the top five in the Congress for a while and that qualifies
him to take on Narendra Modi in Vadodara. But unless he is forced the way the
party did to Amarinder, I doubt he would ever face the electorate.
Then you have Digvijay Singh who
was on a “political sanyas” for 10 years after he presided over the decimation
of Congress in Madhya Pradesh in 2003. He could be a good bet against Modi in Benares
as he has been in the forefront of a verbal campaign against the BJP’s prime
ministerial candidates all these years ever since he refused to contest an
election. But then, speaking to the media is one thing and contesting an
election is another.
Of course, P Chidambaram read the
writing on the wall and opted out. Even in 2009 when the party had an alliance
with DMK, he managed to win in a controversial manner. You don’t have to be a
political scientist or psephologist to predict what would have been his fate
this time. So his son would get some valuable training in contesting elections.
Obviously, the party could not have been firm with one of its most senior
leaders and forced him to contest.
A churning is going on in the
Congress at present but the irony is that it has come quite late in the day.
The older generation is on its way out — those who lose (like Amarinder and
Soni) would be relegated to the margins of the party in the new leadership
under Rahul Gandhi. (March 24, 2013 )
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