Gen Next to take charge of Congress?

When all the political parties hit the campaign trail in Uttar Pradesh, it was expected that the high-profile BJP MP from Gorakhpur, Yogi Adityanath, would stay away from it as he was said to be sulking over the distribution of tickets in and around his constituency. The fact that the Hindu Yuva Vahini, patronised by him, decided to field its own candidates in six Assembly segments, was seen as a clear sign that the Yogi was on the warpath. But contrary to these perceptions, the fiery Yogi who has a huge following in eastern UP, is the BJP’s star campaigner in the ongoing election. Although it is true that the Yogi was angry with the party leadership, BJP president Amit Shah persuaded him to drop his objections and join the campaign. Mr Shah is learnt to have convinced the Gorakhpur MP that he had been specially picked by the gods to unite the Hindus, promote the Hindu faith and work for the formation of a Hindu society. As such, Mr Shah further told the Yogi, he should do the bidding of the gods and help the party usher in a Hindu rashtra and, if destiny favoured him, he could even become UP chief minister in the future. The Yogi was apparently taken in with this argument and promptly got down to the task at hand, which, he believes, has been assigned to him by the all mighty.

It was meant to be a show of unity but instead it turned out to be a trial of strength. Last week, Madhya Pradesh’s senior Congress leaders Digvijay Singh, Kamal Nath and Jyotiraditya Scindia, who are engaged in a bitter turf war in their home state, reached Bhopal together by a chartered flight. Having failed to turn up for the last protest march organised by the Congress against demonetisation, the three leaders made it a point to put in a joint appearance for the party’s rally against MP chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. However, their rivalries surfaced as soon as they touched down in Bhopal. The three leaders made it a point to leave the airport separately to enable their respective supporters to welcome them individually. This divide was further evident at the protest rally when the seniors from Delhi got up to address the gathering. While it would be assumed that the assembly of party workers would respond to the speeches of all the three leaders with a thunderous applause, in this case, a section of the crowd was seen cheering each speaker separately. This was clearly an indication that each leader has his set of supporters but there is no meeting of the minds or the hearts on the ground despite their best efforts to show that there are no differences between them.

It is a well-known fact that Congress president Sonia Gandhi has shed her responsibilities and handed over the functioning of the party to her son and party vice-president Rahul Gandhi. Nevertheless, it was believed that she would campaign in her Lok Sabha constituency Rae Bareli in the ongoing UP Assembly elections. However, she chose to stay away. Her decision has been described by Congress insiders as a sign of the transfer of power to the next generation. As a result, it is becoming increasingly evident to Congress insiders that Mrs Gandhi is unlikely to contest the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and that daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will instead be fielded from Rae Bareli. Though Priyanka Gandhi has been managing her mother’s constituency for several years now and was even actively involved in the planning of the current Assembly polls in UP, she has publicly declared that she is not joining active politics. However, Mrs Gandhi has also made it known that she does not intend to carry on after she turned 70 and since she crossed that milestone last year, she is apparently keen to hand over the baton to Gen Next. It is, therefore, expected that Priyanka Gandhi will put all speculation to rest and take over the reins of Mrs Gandhi’s constituency in the next election.

In case the Congress does not fare well in the current set of Assembly polls, the party rank and file will look for somebody to blame for the poor result. Since party members cannot mount a direct attack against party vice-president Rahul Gandhi, poll strategist Prashant Kishor who was roped in by the Nehru-Gandhi scion to plan the party’s campaign in UP, Punjab and Uttarakhand, will be the most obvious target. Congress leaders involved with the poll campaign are particularly irked as an over-confident Kishor is invariably incommunicado, making it known that he has a hotline to Mr Gandhi. They grumbled that Mr Kishor makes tall promises but fails to deliver. For instance, he assured party strategists in Uttarakhand that he would personally get cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu to campaign in the hill state but nothing came of it.