Why Is Congress A Red Rag To The BJP Bull ?

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BY R.K.MISRA 

Seemingly meaningless coincidences often carry masterfully scripted calculations.

So a Congress supporting dalit legislator from Gujarat ,Jignesh Mevani finds himself whisked away to far-off Assam in a midnight operation normally reserved for terror suspects while another high profile party colleague, Hardik Patel  becomes a self-invited target of a ‘ will-he, wont-he’ speculative exercise hinting at defection/departure for greener pastures. Hardik has since quit. At the national level a similar exercise in relation to cat’s whisker  poll strategist, Prashant Kishore reaches a high point before winding down into nothingness. Standing in the eye of this raging storm is the Indian National Congress, down but   still not out. It accounts for the second highest number of legislators in the country 750 to the BJPs 1400.

Ridiculing the Congress  at every point and turn ,yet even after  a quarter century of ruling Gujarat, why does the Narendra Modi led Bhartiya Janata Party(BJP) still get goosebumps every time  elections near? Led by the Prime Minister down the vertical governance  grid and the J.P. Nadda headed party  pyramid, all roads from Delhi now lead to Gujarat amidst heightened media speculation of early elections. To add to the confusion, the Election Commission, has cut short  the barely year long tenure of  Gujarat ,Chief Electoral Officer(CEO), Anupam Anand and replaced him with P. Bharathi, five years his junior to conduct the ensuing polls. Anand’s predecessor S. Murali Krishna enjoyed a three year stint.

 It’s belly bloated with Congress flotsam and jetsam in pursuit of  avowed goal of  Congress-free India, a bulging BJP is busy laying the chessboard afresh for the Gujarat Assembly elections due later this year. And this is where the Congress opposition and its emerging youth leaders raise the heckles of the ruling strategists.

Firebrand dalit leader Jignesh Mevani, a Congress supported independent legislator from Vadgam constituency of North Gujarat was picked up in the dead of April 21 night from his constituency by the Assam Police, brought to Ahmedabad and flown to Assam. Aided by the Gujarat police, his office, home and those of his associates were rummaged, mobiles confiscated and computers seized. His offence was that he had tweeted against the Prime Minister on April 18 and an executive member of the  Bodoland Territorial Council had lodged a complaint with the  Kokrajhar police station on April 19. The action was lightning swift. Loosely translated the tweet  read ”Prime Minister Narendra Modi who worships Godse is on a tour of Gujarat from April 20.I urge him to appeal for peace and brotherhood in the communal incident affected Himmatnagar, Khambhat and Veraval towns. This is the least that one can hope from one who built the Mahatma Mandir”.

Mevani was produced in court where police sought  13 days remand ,was given three and at the end of which, filed another FIR, this time of assaulting a woman cop while being brought from Guwahati airport to Kokrajhar on April 21 and taken on another five days remand. The Court while granting bail to Mevani a second time had harsh words for the Assam Police. A ‘false FIR” in a “manufactured case” ruled Judge Aparesh Chakravarty pointing out that no sane person  will ever try to outrage the modesty of a lady  police officer in the presence of two male police officers in a moving vehicle  and there is nothing in the record to hold that the accused is an insane person. The judge requested the Guwahati high court to stop cops from turning Assam into a police state.

Why would Assam turn  the full force of it’s ire on an independent legislator from a distant land ? Assam is a BJP ruled state as is Gujarat which additionally is also the homeland of the Prime Minister and the union home minister . Interestingly while the dalit leader  was in the custody of the Assam Police, the Gujarat BJP president  C.R.Patil was busy welcoming Manibhai Vaghela, a former Congress leader from Mevani’s constituency into the BJP at a well publicized function .

So what could be common between Jignesh Mevani, the dalit leader and  Hardik Patel working President of the Gujarat Congress who has also been in the cross-hairs of the BJP for long ?

Both had their baptism in politics through agitational fire. The two along with young OBC leader Alpesh Thakore constituted a triumvirate  which was also a Congress  caste phalanx of patidars, dalits and OBCs that had rocked the BJP boat rather violently in the 2017 Assembly elections. The BJP was reduced to it’s lowest tally of 99 seats in a 182 member House ever since Modi took over as chief minister in 2001 . Months earlier, the three had  proved the nemesis of the Anandiben Patel government leading to her replacement in August 2016 though she was subsequently rehabilitated as the Governor of neighbouring Madhya Pradesh and later shifted to Uttar Pradesh . Patel had replaced Modi as chief minister when the latter took over as the Prime Minister in 2014 and was herself replaced  by Amit Shah confidante Vijay Rupani who has since given way to Bhupendra Patel at the head of a spanking new cabinet recently.

Jignesh shot into the limelight when he took up the cause of seven members of a dalit family who were flogged for skinning a dead cow in Una, Saurashtra region of Gujarat in July 2016 and the incident snowballed into statewide protests. Though an independent technically, he is one of fast rising star of the Congress and will formally join the party before the polls.. Though Alpesh Thakore, appointed national secretary shifted to the BJP before the 2019 national elections, Hardik persevered and was made the working president of the state unit. Young Patel recently got nervy when there were talks of  Khodaldham trust  head Naresh Patel joining the Congress as a chief ministerial candidate on the recommendations of  Prashant Kishore. The BJP took this opportunity to fish in the troubled waters of the Congress but the latter initiated damage control measures saving the day.

 Mevani’s arrest could not have come at a better time for the Congress. It has provided a tailormade issue for dalit mobilization and his Rashtriya Dalit Adhikar Manch(RDAM) has  grabbed the opportunity with both hands.”It was a conspiracy hatched by the BJP but such intimidatory tactics will not deter me from carrying on my fight against the ‘anti-people’ policies of Prime Minister Modi, the BJP and the RSS”, Mevani said after his release.

But despite the gradually falling tally of the ruling BJP from election to election and the likelihood  of Aam Admi Party(AAP) making  inroads into it’s  hitherto impregnable urban bastions ,it is a tough grind ahead for the Congress in Gujarat. The last time, the Congress was elected to power in Gujarat was in 1985 when Madhavsinh Solanki set a record that still remains unbroken-bagging 149 of the 182 seats . But then thirty-seven years is a long time in history and the journey out of an abyss is never easy.

 https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/the-intriguing-chain-of-events-in-gujarat-1105723.html

 

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