Anita Katyal | RS Election Sparks Game of Thrones; J&K Cong Wants Hindu President
The Congress also has to be mindful of the claims of various aspirants, as it can ill-afford a rebellion in its ranks at this stage.
Rahul Gandhi, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, may call them his “Babber Shers,” and the Congress party’s legal eagles may have been deployed to defend them in court, but the Youth Congress members who held a shirtless protest at the recent AI summit have become a source of embarrassment for most party leaders. When TV news channels ran prime-time discussions on this subject, the Congress media department made frantic calls to senior spokespersons asking them to participate in the debate, but many backed out as they felt it would be difficult to defend the protest. Congress leaders were subsequently asked to tweet in favour of the stir, but this diktat was largely ignored. Congress insiders maintain that the Youth Congress planned the protest without informing the leadership, but once the government initiated police action against the protesters, the party had no choice but to defend them. The Youth Congress members have now been told to step up their protests, but they have a new problem at hand. The vendors they usually use for printing publicity material have backed out. As a result, the organisers have no choice but to sit and write out posters and placards themselves, which has turned out to be a test of their calligraphy skills.
With the next round of Rajya Sabha elections coming up next month, the Congress has to deal with a serious challenge. It has become critical for the party to ensure that its numbers do not slip below 25, the minimum required to be eligible for the post of Leader of Opposition, currently held by party president Mallikarjun Kharge. Since the Congress party’s strength in assemblies has dwindled, its leadership has to go all-out to shore up its numbers. It is precisely for this reason that the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam is being persuaded to forgo its claim and instead help elect a Congress candidate from Tamil Nadu. Although there is no official word from either side, the grapevine says the Congress is even willing to drop its demand for power sharing if their alliance wins the forthcoming Assembly election.
The Congress also has to be mindful of the claims of various aspirants, as it can ill-afford a rebellion in its ranks at this stage. In the case of Madhya Pradesh, former chief ministers Digvijaya Singh and Kamal Nath are pushing for the candidature of their respective camp followers. Kamal Nath is learnt to have conveyed to the Congress leadership that he could persuade his old friend and former Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik to help in the election of a Congress candidate, as his party has some spare votes. The subtext here is that Mr Nath will do the needful provided the party accommodates him or his camp follower in the Upper House. However, there is a lurking fear of cross-voting by MLAs supporting Digvijaya Singh if his nominee is not picked. The full picture will emerge over the next week or so.
The Parliamentary Friendship Groups set up by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla with 60 countries have led to an unusual situation. For instance, the group scheduled to visit Suriname is headed by Aam Aadmi Party MP Sanjay Singh. But the Lok Sabha Secretariat clearly overlooked the fact that Mr Singh was arrested in the liquor scam case and is presently out on bail. His passport has been confiscated, and he is not allowed to travel abroad without court permission. It would be interesting to see Mr Singh approach the courts requesting that his passport be released because the Lok Sabha Speaker wants him to lead an Indian delegation abroad while it was the Modi government which pushed the Enforcement Directorate to investigate him. But Sanjay Singh has a strong case now that other AAP leaders have been cleared in the excise policy case. P. V. Midhun Reddy of the YSR Congress Party finds himself in the same situation. He too was arrested in the liquor scam case and is out on bail, and will have to approach the courts for the release of his passport.
The growing anger against Tariq Hamid Karra, president of the Jammu and Kashmir unit of the Congress, for his ineffective functioning has resulted in uniting party cadres from the Jammu and Kashmir regions, normally at loggerheads with each other. In fact, the “Karra hatao” campaign has further led leaders from the two regions to push for the appointment of a Hindu leader as the new state party chief. They have argued that the only Hindu president of the state party unit from Jammu was appointed four decades ago — and that too for a brief period. Such an appointment, they say, would help dent the Bharatiya Janata Party’s strong Hindu base in Jammu, which was once aligned with the Congress. Besides Mr Karra, the Jammu and Kashmir in-charge Syed Naseer Hussain is also being targeted for being unresponsive to their demand for Mr Karra’s removal. Congress insiders are convinced that Mr Nasser is hesitant to approach the leadership on this issue, as Mr Karra was handpicked by Rahul Gandhi.
