Congress

Today’s Times of India, Mumbai  paper carried a news item which really surprised me. Congress leader Jairam Ramesh admitted openly that Congress is facing existential crisis and said that party leaders should make collective efforts to overcome the challenges the Congress party  faced  from PM Modi and BJP Chief Amit Shah. He further stated that earlier in 1977 to 1980, and from 1996 to 2004 Congress had faced Electoral reverses, when they were out of power during these periods but they successfully recovered from the reverses and came back to power. This is the first time some leader from Congress party has openly made a statement about the crisis in the party, and I will be not be surprised that tomorrow some other leader from Congress will come out and make a statement that there is no existential crisis in the party and what ever is said by Jairam Ramesh is his personal views and not a official statement from Congress party. I am happy that some leader from Congress have realised that they have crisis in hands unless they do some thing very fast they will be entirely wiped out in 2019. But some of the recent incidents show that Congress is still not ready in realising  that they are no longer the same  party which they were decade back.

1. Nitish Kumar decided to leave the Grand Alliance of RJD/Congress/JDU  and he took the support of BJP and again formed the Govt in Bihar.
2. BJP getting more than expected votes in Presidential and Vice Presidential elections, it means that some of the Congressmen and other oppositions members voted for BJP candidates.
3. Crisis in Gujarat Congress- Gujarat Congress Chief Shankar Singh Vaghela along with 5 other MLAs resigned from Congress party, and there were rumours that more MLAs  are going to follow him.
4. This action of  Vaghela & co. and other rumours made Congress jittery as in the approaching Rajya Sabha elections from Gujarat, they were poised to win one seat on their strength in assembly and their candidate is Ahmed Patel, who is political secretary to Sonia Gandhi. So that others MLAs do not defect Congress party made the arrangement of taking all the remaining MLAs to resort in Karnataka, which is Congress ruled state. But this move also back fired as the Karnataka Minister, who arranged for this jaunt came under CBI/ED raids for amassing unaccounted money, and all these MLAs were shifted to resort in Gujarat.
5. Congress party is not able to realise that this way they may manage to win the elections for Ahmed Patel, but what will happen to Congress in Gujarat assembly elections later this year. Will Congress able to keep their flock together or few more MLAs will switch over to BJP as every one knows that after Shankar Singh Vaghela’s departure there is no leader in Gujarat Congress with mass following.
6. Political Pundits have started predicting that in the next round of assembly elections in Gujarat, MP, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Chhatisgarh there are very slim chances of Congress doing well, as they do not have any creditable leaders in these states, who have got the mass following. What ever leaders they have in these states are either boot lickers of Congress High Command (ie Rahul & Sonia Gandhi) or they are there because of nepotism or they are old people with decades old ideas of politics. They can not be match for the brain trust of BJP headed by Amit Shah and PM Modi with modern ideas which are not based on caste and communal politics.
7. In the last few months except for victory in Punjab state elections, which was not because of leadership of Sonia/Rahul Gandhi but for Capt Arminder Singh tactics when he did not allow Congress high command to dictate their terms, and anti incumbency votes of Akali Dal.

It is really pity that more than One and quarter century old political party which was involved in freedom movement, is going through this calamity and if they do not realise their mistakes  and correct themselves there is every likely hood that in the near  future there will be Congress Mukt Bharat and if that happens then they are to blame themselves as they did not read the writing on the wall. For Democracy to survive it is mandatory that with good govt you must also have strong opposition, but is the Congress ready to play the role of effective opposition. Till today the Congress as a opposition party at centre  have not behaves like a good opposition party but their behaviour is just to make noise in the parliament if some thing happens to their leaders and they make noise of political vendetta and things like that. There has not been any concrete debates in the parliament by Congress leaders regarding govt policies, during last 3 years.

What you say my friends.

Awaiting your feed backs and comments.