How Sonia & Co. helped in the rise of Modi
BY RK MISRA
The best way to remember your wife’s
birthday is to forget it once. The surest way to show a penny pincher political party it’s place is a penalizing push to it’s posterior.
The 2014 mandate was just about that-a resounding slap to the
Congress-notwithstanding that division of votes led BJP to majority with 282
seats. The BJP got 31 per cent votes and the Congress 19.3 per cent. This in
effect means that almost five of every
ten votes cast in 2014 ignored both the national parties, the BJP and the
Congress.
The fact, however is that whether due
to post-poll paralysis or a
self-induced stupor, the Congress
national leadership seems to be in a drugged trance, yet to find their bearings
following the sound thrashing after a decade in the saddle.
It could do well to look towards Gujarat,
not because the one man who
singlehandedly masterminded their departure from Delhi hails from here but also because the political events unfolding
in India are but a manifestation of the affairs of the Congress in this state
through the years.
It has been almost a quarter century
since the Congress came to power in
Gujarat on it’s own steam. It was in 1985 that Madhavsinh Solanki was
re-elected to power with a steamroller majority and just three months later
replaced with Amarsinh Chaudhary because
of an anti-reservation agitation
fuelled by a former Congress chief minister, Chimanbhai Patel. Solanki was brought back, again just three months before
the elections were due, with predictable results. The Congress was ousted from
power in March 1990 with Chimanbhai Patel replacing Solanki heading a Janata
Dal government. Since then the Congress has never got elected to power in
Gujarat.
The Congress did however form
governments in the state through the
backdoor twice,only to lose out when
elections followed. The first time this happened was when Chimanbhai Patel broke away from the
parent party to form a regional entity, Janata Dal-Gujarat. He later ousted the
BJP from his ministry in October 1990 but continued in power with Congress
support, eventually merging his regional party into the Congress to continue as
Congress chief minister till his sudden death in 1994.He was replaced by
Chhabildas Mehta but the Congress lost in the elections that followed in 1995
ushering in the first BJP government headed by Keshubhai Patel.
The Congress was back in Gujarat
through the backdoor after the BJP saw
itself ousted from power. Patel faced a rebellion from Shankersinh Vaghela when
the latter walked away with a large chunk of party legislators to Khajuraho
past October 1995.Veteran leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee brokered peace with Patel
replaced by Suresh Mehta and party
general secretary Narendra Modi sent out of Gujarat. However the peace was
short lived and the hounding of the
rebels led to the fall of the Mehta government(it was dismissed) with Vaghela
forming his own regional outfit (Rashtriya Janata Party) and coming to power with Congress support in
1996 after a short spell of President’s rule. However Patel was back in power
in March 1998 at the helm of a BJP government after decisively beating the
Congress-RJP combine in the Vidhan Sabha elections that followed. Narendra Modi
replaced Patel in October 2001 and
thrice thrashed the Congress, virtually
into oblivion in Gujarat until he handed over the reigns of the state to his
chosen replacement Anandiben Patel. As for himself, he replicated Gujarat countrywide in 2014, to takeover charge of
the country, sending the Congress into stupor it stoutly refuses to shake off.
The Congress in Gujarat was handicapped
by the looming figure of Ahmed Patel, the political advisor to Congress
president Sonia Gandhi. Patel who hails
from Gujarat, had a decisive say always and no leadership worth it’s salt could ever develop in the Congress in the
state. The last man standing was Madhavsinh Solanki who refused to bow before Patel. Even his son, Bharat who was a
minister in the UPA government, had to move into Patel’s good books to take his
career forward in the Congress. Incidentally, Madhavsinh Solanki’s was the last elected Congress government and
he was the longest serving Congress
chief minister in Gujarat. His record was broken by Modi who however could not
break Solanki’s record of bagging 149 of
the 182 seats in the 1985 Vidhan Sabha elections.
The main reason for the sorry state of
Congress affairs in Gujarat was the complete lack of understanding of the
emerging situation by it’s party top brass. The Congress high command has made
no mean a contribution in the growth of Modi and the dimunition of it’s own
party leadership in the state. Everytime there were reverses in elections and
the president of the state unit put in his papers, it took months, even over an
year for the top brass to make up it’s mind on the replacement. It happened in
the case of Sidhartha Patel, Arjun Modvadia and even Shaktisinh Gohil. By the
time, it moved, the situation had changed on the ground. Hardly any leader has
been nurtured. It is the same pack which is being reshuffled. Had someone cared
to study Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s strategy of crisis management,-of going into
battle with a new slogan and a new team-it would have known how to tackle Modi.
Ironically it was Modi who adopted Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s tactics and decimated
the Congress. By the time the Congress High Command realized the importance
of the insignificant spark it had
neglected in Gujarat, the blazing inferno had already taken the toll of it’s
government in New Delhi.
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