A Congress Cell in the BJP HQ
What next for Shashi Tharoor? As the BJP top brass met the media over lunch to celebrate the Modi government’s 11 years in power, one of the questions that was doing the rounds was whether Shashi Tharoor would be joining the BJP. Clearly, the Congress leader has run foul of his party leadership when he emerged as one of the key defenders of the government globally, during Operation Sindoor. But after that, Tharoor and the Congress have hit a stand-off. The way the rules stand, if the Congress expels him, Tharoor gets to keep his Lok Sabha membership. However, if he resigns on his own, then he would have to resign from his Lok Sabha seat as well and contest the election afresh on a new party symbol. It is a question of who blinks first. The Congress has longer staring power for it can easily sideline Tharoor by not fielding him on crucial debates in Parliament and keeping him out of state politics. But what Tharoor has, is vision. It would be a mistake to sideline someone who has carved an enviable global niche for himself. The Congress leadership would be wiser to co-opt him and use his very persuasive articulation as a platform for putting across the party’s views. Politically speaking, Tharoor is better off within the Congress than outside. The question really is who—or what—will bridge the gap between the party and one of its most articulate leaders. A sub text to the question is, who will bell the Kerala Congress because the break point lies there.
But to get back to the BJP lunch meeting; when asked as to whether Tharoor would be joining their party, a spokesperson known for his cutting wit, quipped, “soon we will have a Congress cell in the BJP headquarters. “ It’s a point well taken for judging by the plethora of Congress leaders who have crossed over in the last decade, it does seem as if the BJP’s membership drive begins at the Opposition HQ.
Horses for Courses
Rahul Gandhi’s statement in Bhopal recently about there being three kinds of horses—Race Ka Ghoda (racehorse), Baraat Ka Ghoda (wedding horse) and the third category being Langda Ghoda (lame horse)—has not gone down well with the old guard in the state; perhaps because the (still) tallest leaders belong to the last category. If you recall, two former Chief Ministers, Digvijaya Singh and Kamal Nath are still active in state politics apart from other veterans. Rahul was addressing the Congress Workers’ Convention in Bhopal when he used this analogy against senior leaders, whom he felt had outlived their utility. He remarked, “Kamal Nath had said that the Congress party sometimes sends a racehorse to the wedding procession and sometimes makes the wedding horse stand in the race line. But there is a third category, which is a lame (langda) horse, so we have to differentiate. We have to retire the lame horse, so this change has to be brought.”
The Congress, being the Congress, after Rahul’s derisive comments, the old guard has started to message each other, signing off as Langda Ghoda.
Interestingly, this is not the first time Rahul has talked about weeding out those workers who are not contributing to the party or working against Congress interests. In Gujarat, while addressing party workers, Rahul had commented that there are two kinds of Congress leaders—those who stand with the public and fight for them and those who connive with the BJP, and threatened to expel the latter. More recently in Haryana, on his first visit to the party headquarters in Chandigarh after the Assembly loss last year, he asked workers to be loyal to the party and not to align themselves with one leader or the other. Both the Haryana and Madhya Pradesh election campaign was led by two members of the Old Guard. The question remains, will Rahul take action and more important, who will be the racehorses to replace the “langda” ones?
SPECULATION ASIDE
Ever since Supriya Sule was chosen to be a part of the government’s outreach abroad post Operation Sindoor, there has been speculation that this could be a step towards the NCP (Sharad Pawar faction) joining the NDA. A coming together of the two NCPs has been ruled out with both Sharad Pawar and Ajit Pawar stating that each leads the “real” NCP, and asking the other to merge. Hence, the other option is for Sharad Pawar to tie up with the BJP directly as a coalition partner.
To give this statement some context, while the NCP (SP) is part of the I.N.D.I.A bloc there have been rumours that Sharad Pawar was looking to change sides, but the stumbling block to this plan was his daughter Supriya Sule. A leader who believes in calling it as she sees it, Sule has been very vocal in taking on the Treasury Benches on the floor of the House. Despite this, the said speculation began doing the rounds once again after she was chosen to lead the multi-party delegation to Qatar, Ethiopia, Egypt and South Africa. The rumours gathered momentum when the NCP (SP) chose not to join the I.N.D.I.A bloc in demanding a special session for Parliament to discuss the Pahalgam terror attack and Operation Sindoor. However, Sule squelched this at a press conference on her return, when she pointed out that she could hardly be seen demanding a debate to question the government, while putting forth her country’s point of view at the same time. This is a fair point and in fact it would be interesting to see what line the Opposition members, who were part of the multi-party delegation, take during the debate in Parliament. The Congress may not field those who were part of the firefighting mission, but what about the smaller regional parties such as the NCP, TMC, DMK and AIMIM that sent its most articulate leaders to defend the country—and thereby, the Modi government?
