At a critical time when it should act as glue in uniting a disparate opposition, the Congress is busy on a path of self-destruction. Without doubt, only the Congress is capable of this.
With elections due in Punjab and still less than two-and-half-year away in Chhattisgarh, both Congress-ruled states are in turmoil – not, please note, due to the opposition but to feuds within, with generous support from the Congress High Command.
Tragedy has already overtaken Punjab, where until a year ago it looked like the Congress was set for a second innings but where now no one can say what is likely to happen in the electoral Mahabharata.
In the 2017 Assembly elections, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) made a dramatic surge in Punjab, almost upsetting the Congress applecart before the veteran and more experienced Amarinder Singh worsted both the AAP and the Akali Dal.
Amit Shah was confident of capturing 65 seats in the 90-member Chhattisgarh Assembly in 2018. Thanks to a spirited fight under the leadership of Bhupesh Baghel, the Congress stunned everyone by taking an incredible 68 seats, ending 15 years of uninterrupted BJP rule.
Now, the Congress High Command has cut Amarinder Singh to size, thrusting a belligerent Navjot Singh Siddhu on him and igniting an internal war the Congress could have well done without.
Even if the High Command suspected Amarinder Singh’s loyalty, it could have waited until after the elections, as Sonia Gandhi did in an earlier era before shunning Bhajan Lal and replacing him with Bhupinder Singh Hooda in Haryana.
If Punjab wasn’t enough, now the Chhattisgarh Chief Minister, who clearly enjoys overwhelming support in the state Congress, is being forced to display his support before the High Command just to retain the saddle that morally belongs to him.
Can there be anything more humiliating to regional satraps of a national party?
True, the BJP faces similar disaffection in some states, but that is precisely why the Congress should have claimed to the voters that it knows how to provide stability if it forms a government.
Baghel is a politician and it is no one’s case that he has no flaws. But even from a distance one can make out that he has brought about several changes for the better in a region that was part of a former Bimaru state.
His ability to transform cow dung into a source of big money is laudable. In one stroke, those with cows sell dung to the government which uses it to make vermicompost. As the cows are guarded tightly (so as not to lose their dung), it has ended the menace of strays. The money paid by the government to those selling dung has injected badly needed big money into the rural economy.
Despite its inherent love for aggression, the BJP realizes it faces a daunting task in Chhattisgarh. So much so that the BJP has announced that Raman Singh, the Chief Minister of 15 years, will be no more its counter to Baghel and that the party will fight the next election on “development issues”.
The BJP must be having a hearty laugh that the Congress in Chhattisgarh is now in distress not due to it but thanks to Baghel’s distracters within and the High Command.
If more and more Amarinders and Baghels are pushed to the wall, voices in the Congress will start asking the Gandhis to show their support base if they want to keep presiding over a party now 136 years old.
