Self-made crises have claimed Congress regimes
Instead of crying victimhood over the ‘murder of democracy' and the ‘use of money power' in the dismissal of its Government in Uttarakhand and the imposition of President's Rule, the Congress must use the occasion to set its own house in order. The party is primarily responsible for the mess that got created in the State. It failed to effectively tackle the brewing dissent within its ranks over the conduct of then Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Harish Rawat. Neither Rawat nor his party high command could contain the damage. Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi had the time to meet Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union leader Kanhaiya Kumar — facing trial on charges of sedition — but he did not reach out to rebel Congress legislators and address their grievance.
He ought to have assumed responsibility, given that State in-charge Ambika Soni had proved unequal to the task. Both Rawat and the Congress's central leadership allowed the crisis to worsen until it assumed critical proportions and it became clear that the Government was on the verge of collapse. Even then, the leadership resorted to a knee-jerk reaction, with the Speaker promptly disqualifying nine rebel MlAs ahead of the trust vote that had been scheduled for Monday. The plan was clear; minus the votes of these legislators, the Rawat regime could have scraped through. In other words, the Congress Government stooped to somehow cling to power, regardless of the fact that it had lost the moral authority to continue, with the numbers stacked against it.
Congress leaders say that the test of majority should be on the floor of the House and that the Rawat Government would have proved its strength on Monday in the Assembly. It's true that the House is where the majority should be tested, but the Congress forgets to add three important aspects. The first is that the party, with the help of the Speaker, was seeking to change the composition of the House ahead of the Motion of Confidence. The second is that — as a sting operation exposed — Rawat was engaged in securing the support of certain rebel legislators through the lure of money (this is money power at play). And the third point is that the State Government had pushed through a money Bill in the Assembly on March 18 by ‘voice vote' despite the majority opposing it and demanding a division (this is murder of democracy). Rawat ought to have seen the writing on the wall and quit then and there.
The Uttarakhand episode shows that the Congress has not learned any lesson after its Arunachal Pradesh experience. There too it had mishandled the rebellion against then Chief Minister Nabam Tuki, leading to a short burst of Central rule and the subsequent formation of a non-Congress Government. If the party does not wake up, it can look forward to similar other crises in some of the States it rules — as in Manipur, for instance, where the Chief Minister is on shaky ground; and in Himachal Pradesh, where the Chief Minister is facing a slew of allegations of corruption (though here the numbers are still stacked in the Congress's favour). Having lost two States without a single vote being cast and facing the possibility of ouster in Kerala and Assam in the upcoming Assembly election, the Congress needs to introspect.