RaGa’s Choices
Of late the Congress is seeing Rahul Gandhi getting more assertive. Whether it is the decision to replace former Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah with D.K. Shivakumar or even the latest choice of Rajya Sabha nominees, all have a distinct Rahul Gandhi stamp. In fact, Team Rahul is even taking credit for the fact that RaGa read the last Assembly elections correctly. It was he who was in favour of breaking up with the DMK and tying up with the emerging TVK in Tamil Nadu. He was overruled on that one, but once the results came in he went ahead and aligned with Vijay, breaking off a decades old alliance with the DMK.
Again, Rahul’s aides point out that he had read the mood on the ground correctly in West Bengal, which is why he campaigned against the TMC. Also it was Rahul who reached out to Shashi Tharoor on the eve of the Keralam elections and extended an olive branch. This sent a message of unity down the ranks. When the Congress won, Rahul may have toyed with the idea of sending Congress general secretary and a key confidant, K.C. Venugopal as the new Chief Minister; but once he realized that the mood amongst the MLAs was against KCV, he made the (right) decision in nominating V.D. Satheesan.
The choice of a “younger” Satheesan over an “older” Ramesh Chennithala sent its own message. There seems to be a course correction post the earlier choices where the older guard was given preference over the younger claimants (remember Pilot vs Gehlot and Scindia vs Kamal Nath?). And now, the buzz at the Congress Party HQ is that there will soon be organizational changes in various states to represent this generational change.
The Madhya Pradesh Candidate
The Congress has zeroed in on Meenakshi Natarajan as its candidate for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections on 18th June. She may have got the ticket but her candidature is far from sealed. The Congress needs 58 votes to win but has only 63 MLAs. The margin is very slim and if there is cross-voting then she could lose the seat.
Apparently, former Chief Minister Kamal Nath was keen to contest and given his skillsets, he would have easily managed the cross-voting. However, Rahul Gandhi held firm against his candidature.
That is not to say that Meenakshi’s candidature has not raised eyebrows. A key member of Team Rahul, she has been given the charge of Telangana state. However, Congress workers from the state complain about her inaccessibility. Whether it is her maun vrat (vow of silence) on Saturdays, which makes communication impossible, or her insistence on travelling to Secunderabad by train (a journey which takes an average of 29 hours from Delhi to Hyderabad), it all makes it a tad difficult for the average worker to reach her.
Ironically, as a Congress leader pointed out, it is these very mannerisms that go a long way in impressing Rahul Gandhi.
Hit job on the Cockroaches
There is a lot of speculation amongst political circles as to who is the unofficial sponsor of the newly launched Cockroach party. Certainly its agenda and modus operandi hark back to the launch of the Aam Aadmi Party, which came in as a non-political outfit raising civic issues of corruption and women security.
Here too the appeal is to the youth by raising issues that concern the Gen Z including the breakdown of institutions and the chaos that the country’s education system has been reduced to.
