Error of judgment? Why Congress went missing at Delhi protests

For an agitation endorsed by the INDIA Bloc and announced by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge just two days ago, the absence of any prominent Congress leader from Friday’s (October 2) Delhi protest demanding Gyanesh Kumar’s removal as Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) was hard to ignore.

This is not to say that the Congress party skipped the agitation altogether. Its frontal organisations, the Indian Youth Congress (IYC) and the National Students Union of India (NSUI), mobilised workers to join the thousands who tried reaching Jantar Mantar on Gandhi Jayanti to protest peacefully but couldn’t, as the Delhi Police swooped in to effect mass detentions.

Error of judgment?

Yet, the top Congress leadership’s error of judgment in not being seen marching towards Jantar Mantar on a day when CPI-M’s MA Baby and Brinda Karat, RJD’s Manoj Kumar Jha, activists Yogendra Yadav, Nikhil Dey and All India Students Association chief Neha Bora and AAP’s Atishi, along with countless others were dragged away by the Delhi Police and placed under detention can’t be overstated.

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More so, since both Kharge and Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, who just two days ago gave a ‘save democracy’ clarion call to Opposition parties and citizens alike, were both in Delhi, as was the supposedly politically astute Priyanka Gandhi.

With the day also witnessing a massive turnout at the protest called in Bombay’s Shivaji Park by Cockroach Janata Party founder Abhijit Dipke, albeit minus the highhandedness of the police and administration witnessed in Delhi, the Congress high command could easily be faulted for missing yet another opportunity to take centre-stage on a politically explosive issue that had caught the country’s imagination.

INDIA Bloc united, yet?

That the Congress leadership dropped the ball on an issue it has been vociferously agitating against seems particularly ironic as even hitherto frosty allies of the INDIA Bloc, such as Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, now seem more accepting of the party’s centrality to the Opposition coalition.

The September 30 INDIA Bloc meeting, following which Kharge announced the alliance’s decision to hold ‘Save Democracy’ demonstrations across all districts of the country from October 2 to October 8, saw all constituents of the grouping give a tacit vote of confidence in the Congress’s leadership. Banerjee, who not long ago snubbed any suggestion of sparing seats for the Congress in Bengal, went to the extent of even suggesting that the party could “have the PM’s post” if it united the Opposition to overthrow Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP-led government in the 2029 Lok Sabha polls.

For the Congress party, the ongoing row over the CEC’s evidently dubious role crafting an “illegal and unconstitutional” Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls and his “connivance with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah” to rig successive elections in the BJP’s favour, is among the issues it sees as potent glue to forge and sustain Opposition unity.

Questions will be asked

As such, the Congress high command absence from a protest called to demand Kumar’s exit as CEC and to seek accountability from the poll panel for disenfranchising over 13 crore Indian voters through the SIR is bound to raise prickly questions about its commitment to the cause it has otherwise been espousing volubly.

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INDIA Bloc leaders: The Federal spoke to leaders who said they were “disappointed” with the Congress high command, particularly Rahul, for missing the Jantar Mantar protest.

“They should have come. The protest was discussed in great detail at the INDIA Bloc meeting on Wednesday. Even if Kharge and Rahul were occupied, they could have at least assigned some senior leaders to participate instead of leaving the task to Youth Congress and NSUI,” a senior CPM leader told The Federal, while expressing hope that since the protestors have pledged to return to Jantar Mantar on Saturday “they (the Congress leadership) shouldn’t give it a miss again”.

Congress should not cry...

Another Opposition leader who was among those detained by the Delhi Police on Friday said the Congress “should not complain if the media starts giving credit to other Opposition parties or outfits like the CJP for taking the fight to the streets and questioning why Rahul didn’t turn up; if it wants to be taken seriously by the people and wants credit for fighting against Modi, Shah and the EC, the Congress needs to present when such protests happen.”

Recalling that Rahul “also kept away from the CJP protest in July” when most other Opposition parties were dispatching leaders to express solidarity with the protesting youth at Jantar Mantar then, the Opposition leader said, “when the credit for (then education minister) Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation went to the CJP, the Congress people began crying foul but their leadership’s absence today shows they didn’t learn any lessons”.

What was leadership doing

Congress insiders blame Kharge and Rahul’s absence from Friday’s protest on a “busy schedule” since the duo were required to attend various official functions in their capacity as Leaders of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha, respectively, to commemorate the birth anniversaries of Mahatma Gandhi and Lal Bahadur Shastri. However, they agree that the leadership “should have designated some senior leaders to participate” in the protest; a lapse they concede was “inexcusable”.

A senior Congress functionary claimed the high command was preoccupied with some “important organisational matters” as decisions regarding change of leadership in the party’s Punjab and Uttar Pradesh units were to be announced the same day (new chiefs for the party in the two poll-bound states were announced late Friday).

The fight for the EC’s accountability was “started by Rahul and the entire Congress party is fully committed to it” and claimed that the leadership will “soon be seen walking shoulder to shoulder with our allies demanding the CEC’s removal

This functionary asserted that the fight for the EC’s accountability was “started by Rahul and the entire Congress party is fully committed to it” and claimed that the leadership will “soon be seen walking shoulder to shoulder with our allies demanding the CEC’s removal and raising issues the Congress president announced after the INDIA bloc meeting”.

The protests, he said, “have just started and we have an entire month’s plan for agitations; on October 6 you will see Khargeji and Rahulji leading the march of Opposition MPs to the Election Commission”.

Until then, the Congress can make peace with the CJP and other Opposition leaders being credited with leading the charge against Modi, Shah and Kumar.