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| Fall of BJP in Jammu & Kashmir | | Leadership Crisis | | NEHA | 12/6/2011 12:20:02 PM |
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MINCING NO WORDS
JAMMU, Dec 5: Things as they stand today suggest that the BJP and regional outfits like AIADMK of Jaya Lalithha, Trinamool Congress of Mamta Bannerjee, Bahujan Samajwadi Party of Mayawati, Biju Janata Dal of Navin Patnaik, Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), and even Samajwadi Party of Mulayam Singh Yadav would inflict a crushing defeat on the Congress party in several states if general elections are held today. The Congress has become unpopular across the country for reasons not really difficult to understand. The Congress would lose badly in Orissa, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan, Chhatissgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and even Karnataka.
The prospects of the Congress party are also not very bright in Uttranchal, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana, which return to the Lok Sabha about 30 members. It has some stable support-base in the North East, but the problem is that these states do not return to the Lok Sabha many members, less than 20. What -- apart from serious corruption charges; failure to deliver; contain inflation and maintain reasonable price situation and high food prices; disconnect between the ruler ad the ruled; weak-kneed foreign policy; and so on – has added to the difficulties of the Congress parties is the rise of Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev, both working day and night to expose the Congress party, the Congress-led UPA Government and the Congress leadership. They have mass appeal and they have the ability and capability of ruining the Congress prospects. To dismiss them as persons of no consequence would be to underestimate their strength.
Yet another difficulty of the Congress party is that it doesn’t have mass leaders in most of the states of the Union, including the very crucial Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Chhatissgarh and Maharashtra. These states return to the Lok Sabha more than 400 members. All these states depend on Sonia Gandhi, who has lost her sheen and appeal for all practical purposes. Besides, she is physically weak. Her son Rahul Gandhi is not an alternative, as he is not only uninspiring but also a green-horn in politics, notwithstanding the unstinted and unqualified support he has been getting from the Congress leadership across the country and a powerful section of print and electronic media for quite sometime now. He is unlikely to click.
The fact of the matter is that the Congress, like the National Conference, is passing through a very critical phase and there appears no steersman who could rescue the fast-crumbling Congress barge. In other words, it is the main opposition BJP party and a number of regional outfits which are in an advantageous position at this point in time. The leadership of the BJP and regional outfits is quite upbeat; the Congress leadership is in a state of complete paralysis; and the Congress-led UPA Government under sever attack from all political formations, including its own allies.
Jammu & Kashmir perhaps is the only State where the Congress appears to be in a commanding position. Not because it has done anything for the people of the state in general and Jammu in particular. It has not done anything. In fact, it has been consistently letting down the people of the state by sharing power with the NC and allowing the latter to act in the fashion it has been acting since January 2009. It is in a commanding position because the state unit of the BJP is in a very bad shape. It is virtually leaderless. It is divided into several groups with each one of them pulling in different direction and trying to let down each other. Seven of the eleven BJP legislators are out of the party because they subverted the people’s mandate by voting for the anti-Jammu outfits like the NC and the Congress. The remaining four legislators do not enjoy the people’s confidence because they are just incapable of doing anything good. Two of the four are under attack because the people and the party cadres feel that they are hand-in-glove with the NC for personal reasons. The fact is that no one takes them seriously. Besides, the BJP has no policy whatever that could induce people to jump on to its bandwagon. It has no Kashmir policy and it has nothing to offer to the people of Jammu province. It is essentially a party of press statements and press conferences. It is devoid of any ideology.
Hold elections to the Lok Sabha or State Assembly today. You would find all or nearly all the BJP candidates biting dust and the Congress scoring impressive victories over them in Jammu province. But the victory of the Congress would mean nothing for the people of Jammu province because it, like the BJP, has no Jammu policy. What an irony! The loss of the BJP will not be the gain of Jammu. Similarly, the gain of the BJP would not compensate the losses Jammu has suffered thus far. The Congress and the BJP are the two sides of one and the same coin.
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