The Hidden Message
Why did Captain Amarinder Singh side with the Centre, and hence the Prime Minister on the Jallianwala Bagh revamp? The revamp has been criticized by many within Punjab as well as Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. This has clearly put the Captain out of sync with his party’s official stand. However, those who are reading between the lines are interpreting this as a salvo of sorts from the Captain to the central leadership not to take him for granted. Clearly, he is fed up with Sidhu’s constant needling, which he feels has the backing of both Rahul and Priyanka. And so perhaps the Captain is sending his own message in retaliation, that he is not without options. Don’t forget, before switching over to the BJP, Jyotiraditya Scindia also supported the revocation of Article 370 and went against the party line set by Rahul Gandhi. Watch this space. For, as Sandip Ghose, op-ed writer pointed out on NewsX Roundtable last week, if Punjab throws up a hung Assembly then anything could happen—which could also include a faction of the Congress led by the Captain breaking away.
Needed, an Ahmed Patel
With Congress facing factional fights in all the (few) states where it has a government, it is clear that the party needs a political troubleshooter. The vacuum left by Ahmed Patel needs to be filled, for it is clear that the Gandhis alone cannot do the needful. Where they have stepped in, they are seen as favouring one leader over the other, from Navjot Sidhu in Punjab to Sachin Pilot in Rajasthan to Bhupesh Baghel in Chhattisgarh. Therein lies the problem because there is no buffer between the warring leaders and the leadership. The current lot of general secretaries (whose job it is to act as a buffer) lack the requisite clout to hammer a solution. This is where Ahmed Patel would step in and smooth ruffled feathers before they met the Gandhis. There are several leaders in the Congress who would be happy to step into this role, from Ghulam Nabi Azad to Kamal Nath but the key question is: does Rahul Gandhi trust them enough to entrust them with this task?
Defending the Indefensible
It’s an old saying at the Press Club, talk to a journalist on the weekend at your peril. For that is when diary items such as this column are written, and scribes are on the lookout for the odd factoid or a mischievous titbit. Hence, the Twitter spat between Congress MP and national spokesperson Manish Tewari versus Priyanka Chaturvedi, his former Congress colleague, who is now a Rajya Sabha MP from the Shiv Sena and also a party spokesperson, could not have been “better timed”. Priyanka took on Manish for defending the alleged rape accused, Tarun Tejpal as someone who is “much maligned, hugely politically persecuted and now honourably exonerated”. This had Priyanka accusing Manish of “patting the back of an alleged rapist”.Tewari was prompt to take her on citing Tejpal’s legal acquittal by a district court. The exchange of “unpleasantries” went on for a while, with one citing the law and the other, morality. Given the fact that the Sena and the Congress are in an alliance in Maharashtra, and that the two are former colleagues, one wonders at the very acerbic nature of this exchange. Tewari feels that this was triggered off by an interview he gave to the Hindu last year (as well as to NewsX) where he named Priyanka (amongst others) as an “import from outside”, who had joined the Congress not out of “ideological conviction” but for the perks of office; and added that outsiders may be made MPs or ministers but should not be given organisational positions (Priyanka was a spokesperson while in the Congress). This may not be the first spat the two have had, but on this one Manish seems to be espousing a very politically incorrect cause, legal acquittals notwithstanding.