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| Congress, PM, HM and minority votes | | Assembly Elections | | Rustam
Jammu, Jan 16: AICC general secretary and the Congress' "Yubraj" Rahul Gandhi, who has put everything at stake to win the minority votes and capture power in Uttar Pradesh, on January 11 faced a very difficult situation in Azamgarh. He had gone there to address an election rally, but he couldn't. Why because several thousand students of Shibli Nomani College, where he stayed for a night, held massive demonstration against him and the Congress. Their grouse against Rahul Gandhi and the Congress was that the Congress-led UPA Government did not hold judicial inquiry into the alleged fake Batla House (Delhi) encounter of 2008 and that the government has slapped "fake cases of terrorism on young persons of Azamgarh". Rahul Gandhi could not venture out of the premises of the college for hours. He left it through backdoor with the help of security forces deployed there in strength for his safety and security. Rahul Gandhi later on assured the students of Shibli Nomani College that "he would look into the alleged fake cases of terrorism slapped on young persons of the place". It was not required, but he did it for the sake of vote-bank politics. He is so desperate.
However, it was AICC general secretary and in-charge of Congress in the crucial Uttar Pradesh Digvijaya Singh who crossed all the lines to placate the angry Muslims and told media persons that he agreed that Batla House encounter was a "fake" encounter and that what the protesting Muslim students alleged was correct. He did not stop there. He went on to say that "he did meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Union Home Minister P Chidambaram to persuade them to investigate the matter but did not succeed". "I always believed that Batla House encounter was fake. The Prime Minister and Home Minister were of the view that the encounter was true. That's why I did not press it further," he, in fact, said and added that he fully shared the view of the protesting students. Digvijaya had in 2008 visited Azamgarh to make common cause with the Muslims there by telling them that the Batla House encounter was a fake encounter. Congress national spokesperson Manish Tiwari, who otherwise is very vocal, refused to react on Singh's comments maintaining that the "party has already expressed its views on the issue repeatedly and has nothing more to say on it".
The implications of what Digvijaya Singh said are many. One, the Congress can go to any extent to win the minority votes, especially the Muslim votes in Uttar Pradesh. The Muslims constitute nearly 18 per cent of the total electorate. It can even compromise national security for winning elections. How else should one describe the statements of Rahul Gandhi and Digvijaya Singh?
Two, the Congress has no or little regards for the Prime Minister and the Home Minister, both of whom belong to the Congress party. The fact that the AICC general secretary told media persons in Azamgarh that he did try to persuade the Prime Minister and the Home Minister to order an inquiry into the alleged fake Batla House encounter but failed was a clear attempt on his part to paint both of them black and win over the Uttar Pradesh Muslims. His statement was as ridiculous as it was communally and politically motivated. It simply served to suggest that the Prime Minister and the Home Minister, and not the Congress, were the real culprits. It's no wonder then that the critics of the Congress party ridiculed Digvijaya Singh and asked him to quit the Congress asking how could he work with and for this party when the Prime Minister and the Home Minister do not accept his version on the Batla House encounter. The BJP took this stand while ridiculing him and Rahul Gandhi
Three, his statement was not only exploited by the BJP, which has using the sub-quota within quota row to expand its support-base in Uttar Pradesh and win the Other Backward Classes votes, but also provided ammunition to the Samajwadi Party to blast the Congress and accuse it of hoodwinking and misleading the Muslim community for garnering its votes. (The Other Backward Classes constitute nearly 55 per cent of the total electorate in Uttar Pradesh.) Samajwadi Party leader Shahid Saddiqi demanded resignation of Manmohan Singh and P Chidambaram saying they didn't concede the Digvijaya Singh's demand for a judicial probe into the 2008 incident. It means the parties like Samajwadi Party, which are also doing their best to capture Muslim votes, would communalize the Batla House issue and polarize voters on communal lines saying the Prime Minister, the Home Minister and the Congress are anti-Muslims.
Four, his statement has created an awkward situation for the Congress party across the country. This became quite evident when Manish Tiwari failed either to defend Digvijaya Singh or the Prime Minister and the Home Minister. The Congress can neither sack Digvijaya Singh nor can it touch the Prime Minister and Home Minister because any negative assertion on the part of the Congress high command would make the party leadership a laughing stock and enable the Samajwadi Party and similar other formations question the very action of the Delhi police in the Batla House episode. Something which would also provide additional ammunition to the BJP which wants to overcome the problem created by the induction of former tainted BSP Minister Babu Singh Kushwaha in the party and improve its tally in Uttar Pradesh.
These are some of the implications of the statement made by the AICC general secretary. The moral of the story is that the Congress will pay a very heavy price in the impending assembly elections and that the non-Congress parties would now be in a more advantageous position. Those who took recourse to the kind of politics the likes of Digvijaya Singh and Rahul Gandhi take not only damage their own party but also damage the very foundation of the polity, called democratic polity. Other parties are also not that pious. They are also responsible for dividing the society on caste and communal lines. But the main culprit, of course, is the Congress which has of late started walking into the trap of the votaries of two-nation theory and advocating religion-based reservation paying scant regard to the Indian Constitution that doesn't contemplate reservation on communal basis. |
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