Has the Congress lost its fire-fighting ability?

The Congress has lost its ability to fire-fight if the internal rebellion in Himachal Pradesh is a barometer. From its safe haven in Lutyens’ Delhi, the high command imagined that pressing two firefighters — Bhupinder Singh Hooda and DK Shivakumar — into service would douse the flames ignited by the state Congress president Pratibha Singh and her son, Vikramaditya Singh, a minister who recently quit the Himachal cabinet.KC Venugopal, the general secretary (organisation) and Rahul Gandhi’s all-purpose person, apparently maintained a studied distance from the power play in this little province, which is the only turf the Congress calls its own in the Hindi belt.Shivakumar, Karnataka’s politically suave deputy chief minister, is on top of tricky situations in his state as the outcome of the recent Rajya Sabha election demonstrated. With chief minister Siddharamaiah, he outsmarted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-Janata Dal (Secular)’s Himachal-like ploy to defy the numbers, weighted in the ruling Congress’ favour, and get an extra candidate of theirs elected. Not only were the BJP-JD (S) outwitted at their ‘Chanakya neeti’, they suffered the ignominy of an MLA cross-voting for the Congress. But Shivakumar’s fire-extinguishing skills were of limited use in Himachal. medium108267584Hooda survived challenges to his position as the Haryana chief minister, within and without, multiple times until he was voted out in 2014. He ought to be more conversant with Himachal than Shivakumar. The problem is, given the power structures in the Congress of today, in which the Gandhi scion has raised his own coterie of ‘loyalists’ who trust nobody outside of the circumference etched by Rahul, Hooda can’t be blamed for not giving his best in circumstances where he is unsure of his own standing. Remember, he was part of the G-23 that asked inconvenient questions of the Gandhis.Rajya Sabha MP Rajiv Shukla is officially Himachal’s central minder. He is allegedly at odds with the chief minister, Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, and bonds well with the six rebel legislators who were at the root of the ongoing dissidence that still keeps Sukhu and his government on edge.Things remain unsettled. Pratibha never forgave the Gandhis for ‘overlooking’ the purported claim of her and her scion for the chief minister’s post.Self-made leaderWhen Sukhu was appointed, his choice was celebrated because as the son of a truckie, he worked his way to the top in the Congress, supporting his studies by doing odd jobs. The archetype ‘proletarian’ — and there aren’t many in the Congress — was an antithesis to the party’s long-time chief minister, the late Virbhadra Singh from the former princely state of Bushahr and a Stephanian and harmonised with the prevailing breed of ‘self-made’ politicians.Sukhu’s only drawback — if it can be termed that — was that he never got on with former chief minister Singh. As a former state Congress president, Sukhu made his share of friends and enemies within the party.To recap, the tipping point came with the Rajya Sabha polls. The Congress has 40 members as against the BJP’s 25 in the 68-member assembly and notionally, there was no contest. However, sensing the presence of at least six malcontents in its rank, the BJP adroitly stoked discontent and fielded an additional candidate who ended up defeating the Congress’ high-profile lawyer, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, by voting for the BJP’s Harsh Mahajan. The government looked like it was about to be unseated.It was saved by a hair’s breadth. The Congress fortunately has its own Speaker who so far played ball with the chief minister (in the prevailing uncertainty, who knows who will turn against who?). medium108267606The errant MLAs were disqualified not for cross-voting but for flouting a whip that directed the legislators to be present in the assembly for voting on the motion on demands and the finance bill. Vikramaditya was not among them but he opened his cards and let on his ambitions by regularly meeting the rebels. He resigned from Sukhu’s cabinet.Amid the speculation that the incumbent chief minister would have to step down, which seemed inspired by the dissidents, the high command reportedly told off Vikramaditya when he called on Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Venugopal, and made it clear Sukhu would stay put.However, the rebellion is in the open and the Congress’ belief was once the next Lok Sabha was constituted in May, the dispensation would become vulnerable again, especially if the party drew a blank like in 2019.If the BJP retained near hegemonic supremacy in the Lower House — and there is little reason to infer it won’t — it won’t take its strategists minutes to instigate the Congress’ rebels and possibly augment their numbers and unseat the Himachal government.A familiar scriptIt’s a tactic that has been used to effect from the 1990s when the BJP sundered a formidable alliance between the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh simply by fanning Mayawati’s ambitions to take Mulayam Singh Yadav’s place as the chief minister.Her mentor, Kanshi Ram, who was more committed to the Bahujan ideology of empowering Dalits and the most backward classes in an upper-caste dominated social regime, was initially not in favour of backing the BJP’s designs. Under Mayawati’s pressure, he relented.The strategy was rehashed in Maharashtra. The BJP picked on the current chief minister and former Uddhav Thackeray associate Eknath Shinde as a facilitator to disarrange the undivided Shiv Sena-helmed secular coalition, split the Sena and later Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and gerrymander a majority with itself as a partner in the government.It helped that Uddhav, who snapped the Sena’s long alliance with the BJP to lay claim and appropriate the chief minister’s chair, got his comeuppance for transgressing the ‘Lakshman rekha’ drawn for him by the BJP.Watch: Shivakumar takes a dig at 'Operation Lotus' medium nocaptionhttps://youtu.be/OFG_Lboi0lU?si=zkTjotv_usT2VG8lUttar Pradesh too saw a wild churn in the Rajya Sabha polls. Fortunately, the SP, which took the hit from the BJP’s machinations, was not in power or else its leader would have been in a spot.But SP chief Akhilesh Yadav should read the tea leaves after seven of his party legislators cross-voted for a BJP candidate, a realty tycoon, who was once a Samajwadi. The point was not so much about Sanjeev Seth, the Lucknow builder, as the fact that the SP’s rebels were from the upper castes.For the past many years, Akhilesh focused on getting the votes of Brahmins, Rajputs and Baniyas. He convinced himself that Brahmins ‘resented’ Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s active and decisive patronage of his Rajput kinsfolk to the ‘detriment’ of ignoring the other forward castes.The belief was shattered by the outcome of the 2022 assembly election. Informed analyses established that more than 80% of Brahmins rooted for the BJP, regardless of who Adityanath pandered to, just as they went for Narendra Modi in the past two Lok Sabha polls, unconcerned about his backward caste roots. Akhilesh missed the big picture.Read more from the author here.