Hari Om
It was February 2013 that Prime Minister Narendra Modi advocated the need for the "Congress-free India" for the first time, saying the Congress and corruption were the two sides of one and the same coin. If India was to prosper, the nation have communal amity and social harmony, national identity to be maintained and promoted, and India to attain a status in the comity of self-respecting nations, the Congress had to be thrown out lock, stock and barrel, he had said. It was his dream and, it appears, it is coming true.
The Congress already had insignificant presence in Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Goa, Tripura and in 5 Union Territories. These regions return more than 300 members to the Lok Sabha.
The electorate decimated the Congress in Rajasthan in December 2013 and in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in May, 2014 -- the epoch-making year for the BJP in the sense that it won 282 seats in the general elections on its own and 336 in alliance with its coalition partners and formed a really popular government at the centre.
The BJP scored a historic victory in Rajasthan, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and its ally BJP captured the crucial Andhra Pradesh and Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) formed the first-ever Government in the newly-created Telangana State. The Congress was not on the scene in any of these three major States, which return 74 members to the Lok Sabha. These States were considered strong bastions of the Congress. But the story of humiliating defeat or extinction of the Congress didn't just end there.
The very resurgent BJP under the able leadership of Narendra Modi, who has a very vast passionate constituency throughout the country, and BJP national president Amit Shah, an organiser of organisers, on October 19 snatched the two other very politically important states of Maharashtra and Haryana from the Congress. It ended the 15-year-long misrule of the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in the land of Shivaji and 10-year-long misrule of the corrupt Congress in Haryana. The BJP went to the polls in these two States all alone, as its inflexible allies, the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra and Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC), overestimated their strength and created a situation that led to the collapse of the alliance between them. The BJP - whose support-base in these two States was limited - won 47 seats in the 90-member House in Haryana and 123 in the 288-member House in Maharashtra - relegated the Congress to third position. These two States return to the Lok Sabha as many as 52 seats. In other words, the so-called grand old party of India has lost its political relevance in 19 major states and 5 Union Territories, which return more than 440 members to the Lok Sabha.
The fast-declining Congress is in power only in three important states of Karnataka, Kerala and Assam. Significantly, the Congress and the BJP are evenly placed in Karnataka, Assam, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir, which elect 66 Members to the Lok Sabha. One can say with reasonable certainly that the BJP would dislodge the Congress Governments in all these States, barring Kerala, in the next Assembly elections. Kerala would be the only State where the Congress would have some say, but even in this southern State the Left front could upset its applecart. Indeed, things are not promising for the Congress anywhere in the country, leave aside a couple of Union Territories in the North-East.
The fact is that today's Congress doesn't have a single leader who can inspire the Indian electorate. It doesn't have a leader of the stature of Indira Gandhi, who had the fighting spirit and ability to take on her opponents head on. AICC chief Sonia Gandhi has lost her charisma. She is no longer a vote-catcher. Her son and AICC vice-president Rahul Gandhi is bereft of new ideas. He has no political instinct. He is hesitant, hollow, uninspiring, incoherent and an unimpressive orator. Indeed, he is not an asset for the party. He, like Sonia Gandhi, is an asset for the BJP! Those who form the coteries of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi are not men and women with any mass experience either. They are just a bunch of self-seekers, power-brokers, intriguers, manipulators and sycophants. They, like former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, have no appeal and no sheen. Not only this, the secular ideology (Congress-style) has become a curse for this oldest of political parties. People, particularly, the younger generation, are interested only in the politics of development and jobs and no longer prepared to listen to and carried away by those who say the "minorities have the first right" over everything in the country.
The truth, in short, is that the Congress is struggling for its very survival and the manner in which things have been developing do suggest that the Congress could become a story of the past. Indeed, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have changed the election dynamics.
(Courtesy: www.niticentral.com) |
