On the day Jyotiraditya Scindia was to officially join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi was seen cracking jokes and laughing with a few fellow lawmakers in Parliament.
The message to his party colleagues was clear: that life moves on and he wasn’t too perturbed by the turn of events.
For a large section of the Congress, however, there are lessons to be learnt from the recent developments in Madhya Pradesh politics – don’t take too many chances and unnecessarily antagonise people when the chips are already down.
The first effects of the MP revolt sprouted in Haryana when Jat strongman Bhupinder Singh Hooda got his way and wrested a Rajya Sabha ticket for his son Deepender Hooda.
Left in the lurch were Randeep Surjewala – a close aide of Rahul Gandhi – and Kumari Selja, who was interim Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s choice.
But the Gandhis decided against taking any chances. Bhupinder Hooda made it amply clear that he would not take lying down any attempts to deny his son a Rajya Sabha berth.
The Congress hadn’t fared too badly in the Haryana elections late last year and the credit was given to Hooda. While the party missed forming the government by a whisker, the feeling was that if the senior leader had been given the charge earlier perhaps the scenario would have been more favourable. Infighting within the Congress cost it a win.
With Scindia’s exit, the top Congress leadership was caught in a bind. Should it give a chance to allegiants like Surjewala who on Rahul’s request contested from the Jind seat despite knowing that it was a BJP stronghold? The eventual loss cost him his constituency in Kaithal.
A worried party leadership decided not to take chances and buckled under Hooda’s pressure. Rahul had to give up on his choice as the Gandhis realised that a loss in the Rajya Sabha polls and exit of other leaders would spell further doom. In fact, when Rahul was repeatedly asked on Thursday in Parliament why his team and people were losing out, he seemed upset and called it a nonsensical question, preferring to focus on the economy.
So, the Gandhis had to compromise on the same issue which led to the exit of Scindia. A lack of visible political future perhaps triggered the former union minister’s exit, a point conceded by Rahul himself in his interaction with the media.
Rahul said that “he (Scindia) saw no political future, so decided to accept the RSS ideology”.
Like Scindia, many young leaders like Sachin Pilot, Jitin Prasada, and others are apparently frustrated and waiting in the wings. And this is something which the Gandhis want to address. Deepender Hooda is young too, but he has a veteran Congress leader in his father to back him. Left to them, the first choice of the Gandhis could have been Surjewala or Selja. But given the circumstances, it’s perhaps politically prudent to compromise on their ideology with the desire to keep the party intact. Scindia, in his exit, has put that fear in the Congress.
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