New Delhi, June 13 (IANS): ... Talking to reporters, Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said, “ Rahul Gandhi, is, and will be the Congress party chief and none of us has any doubt about it. ...”

 

 

 

THUS, the Congress party put behind it the artificial leadership crisis its President Mr. Rahul Gandhi had designed to hoodwink the organisation in the wake of a massive setback in the Lok Sabha elections. He threatened to resign from the presidentship of the country’s oldest political party. The other bigwigs of the party urged him repeatedly not to quit. The core group of the party was dissolved statedly because the members’ tenures had expired. And then spokesperson Mr. Randeep Singh Surjewala made that much-awaited and much-expected announcement that Mr. Rahul Gandhi was, is, and will be the Congress President -- no matter the crushing defeat of the party in the Lok Sabha elections, no matter how he pushed the party down in the dump organisationally, no matter how Congress proved itself to be an incompetent, insolvent, inefficient and impotent organisation in the span of just a few years. No matter whatever, the Congress party will remain forever under the thumb of the Gandhi family -- mother-son-daughter!!!

 

The post-poll situation offered the Congress party a golden opportunity to throw off the yoke of the Gandhi family. But then, on expected lines, the party rank and file capitulated, and finally urged Mr. Rahul Gandhi to continue as President -- forever ... “none of us has any doubt about it”, as Mr. Surjewala said.

 

Thus, the party survived an artificial leadership crisis which was nothing but a nautanki (fake show, drama), to use a from-the-street term. Obviously, Mr. Rahul Gandhi never wanted to quit, but he did play hoax to which party fell prey. Everything will be back to normal soon.

 

The party will remind itself once again what Mr. Rahul Gandhi had said as he conceded the defeat (what else could he do?!) that he would keep fighting the anti-democratic BJP politically and ideologically. And then will begin a fresh wave of childishness by the Congress party -- of opposing everything Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi and his Government would do or say. And all that would happen under the garb of an ideological battle.

 

Sure enough, the Congress party will keep its downward travel into a deeper dump beyond retrieval, beyond redemption -- and beyond remorse.

 

True, the word ‘remorse’ has not been written in Congress party’s political dictionary. Whatever it has done in the past so many decades -- from messing up the economy to messing up the Kashmir situation to defeating secularism in its own name -- it has had no remorse. It feels that it can do no wrong, and by that logic, the whole nation is wrong as it rejected such a wonderful political party in election after election.

 

This happened in 2014. This is happening in 2019: The people are wrong. The Bharatiya Janata Party is anti-democratic. The Prime Minister is out to destroy the nation’s institutions. The Modi Government is going to make the country declare insolvency soon ...!

 

Now also, under the continued leadership of Mr. Rahul Gandhi and his family, the Congress party will keep conducting itself in an irresponsible manner, insulting the democratic mandate of the country, as if all the millions of voters who chose the BJP and its allies are bloody fools ...!!! By that token, everybody is wrong and only the Congress party is right, no matter its crushing defeat. And so, Mr. Rahul Gandhi will continue to be the party’s President forever!

 

The common man, therefore, knows that the leadership crisis the party faced was just fake, and not serious.

Exactly 80 years ago, that is 1939, the Congress party had faced an internal crisis -- which, too, was almost artificial -- because Mahatma Gandhi had insisted upon his own candidate, Pattabhi Sitaramaiah, to become party President. But Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose defeated the Mahatma’s man at the Tripuri Congress. The party went into a terrible confusion as Gandhiji’s candidate lost to an upstart young man. The party split as the core group of leaders did not allow Netaji to function properly. That was how Netaji founded Forward Block as his political party.

Even that bitter experience did not teach Congress party any lesson.

Now also, 80 years later, the party seems to have refused to learn any lesson from the abominable condition in which it has come to get stuck.

Of course, in time Mr. Rahul Gandhi may learn a few tricks of the political trade and may help the party to do a little better. But by now, the nation has come to doubt even his ability and leadership quality. There is a widespread belief -- in the nation and also in the party -- that the fellow is just incompetent. Despite that, the party’s collective leadership seems to have decided in favour of Mr. Rahul Gandhi’s continuance as party chief only because the organisation does not seem to have anybody else for the leadership position.

 

What a bankruptcy!

 

May that not happen ever, but it may be Congress party itself that may prove BJP President Mr. Amit Shah’s slogan of ‘Congress Mukta Bharat’ true. In other words, the Congress party may destroy itself and prove Mr. Shah right!

The next five years will be Modi years, as were the previous five years. In this period, the Opposition parties may face a massive existential crisis whose solution they would not know or have. And the actual proof of this possibility came in the form of how the Congress party created a fake leadership crisis and then sorted it out.