Chennai: G.K. Vasan quitting the Congress is bound to hurt the party, not just in Tamil Nadu where it has hit its lowest low of a mere four per cent votes in the last Lok Sabha elections, but also at the national level.
Fears could be justified within the AICC that a few other Vasans might pop up here and there, particularly in states going to polls between 2015 and 2017 like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand — the last two states already appearing lost due to the anti-incumbency factor.
The blame game is in full swing in both the camps — one led by Vasan and the other captained by E.V.K.S. Elangovan — hand-led by a host of leaders (what it lacked in terms of cadres, the Congress always made up its lack of cadres by the number of its leaders). Vasan’s team is accusing the AICC of pursuing policies and taking decisions that were “against the mood of the cadres, be it party affairs or on key issues concerning Tamil Nadu people”, while the ‘loyal’ Congressmen sneer and fume at the rebel for deserting the ship after enjoying the fruits of office for most of the years since merging his Tamil Maanila Congress with the parent party in 2002.
It would be a Herculean task for EVKS to pull himself away from the ‘expert counselling’ of an army of thalaivars and thinking for himself; even more difficult would it be for him to hammer out unity in the state unit notorious for bitter divisions for decades.
Life is not going to be easy for Vasan either. The circumstances that compelled his late father G.K. Moopanar to leave the Congress and launch TMC in 1996 were very different — he gained from the huge opposition already existing within the Congress in Tamil Nadu to the decision of Narasimha Rao to align with Jayalalithaa despite corruption allegations against her then regime.
Also, party stalwarts like P. Chidambaram, Dhanushkodi Adityan and Arunachalam decided to stand by him; besides, superstar Rajnikanth declared support.
There is no such senior now backing Vasan barring perhaps S.R Balasubramanian of the Moopanar era. Even SRB is well past his prime. The rival camp appears formidable while the AICC is certainly stronger than what it was under Narasimha Rao. History shows that no Congress leader fared well when he quit the party to launch on his own — Nedumaran, Kumari Anandan, Sivaji Ganesan and even Chidambaram.
Besides, the general perception is that Vasan has now quit not due to any ideological differences with the high command but because he has fallen out of Rahul Gandhi’s favour and that made continuance in the Congress untenable.
“It is obvious that Vasan decided to return to his TMC because he found no future for himself in the Congress and no future for the Congress in TN,” said a Congress leader and former Union minister. “Also, he might be hoping to make some headway by striking an alliance with a Dravidian major during the elections. Besides, the conviction of Jayalalithaa seems to have energised the dreams of some leaders for a larger political space in the state.”
