FROM THE EDITOR- IN- CHIEF
The belated but absolutely necessary resignations of Union ministers Ashwani Kumar and Pawan Bansal on May 10 ought to have brought a sense of relief to the Congress under relentless attack from the Opposition, and fast losing the battle for public perception. Instead, it has revealed simmering conflict at the apex of the UPA, between Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. In normal circumstances, the Congress party’s emphatic victory in Karnataka would have brought some joy and glow back to a party beleaguered by successive scams and scandals. But the moment has got overshadowed.
It was a well- known fact in the corridors of power that both Kumar and Bansal had been handpicked for their respective portfolios, law and railways, by the Prime Minister in the last Cabinet reshuffle in October 2012. Bansal was, in fact, chosen in preference to Gandhi family loyalist C. P. Joshi who had been allotted additional charge of railways after the resignation of Trinamool Congress’s Mukul Roy in September 2012. Quite clearly, Kumar and Bansal were the Prime Minister’s loyalists. Unsurprisingly, he was not willing to sack them even after it had become clear that Kumar had interfered in a CBI report on Coalgate and that Bansal’s nephew had been caught accepting a bribe from a senior railway official in return for a plum post. Manmohan’s argument was simple: Neither had been indicted by any court of wrongdoing.
Manmohan eventually lost his battle, but not without putting up a fight. At 82, and nine years into prime ministership, his goals are at variance with Sonia Gandhi. She needs to secure her son and chosen heir Rahul Gandhi’s future. And the strong public perception of corruption in the UPA is doing that cause no good. Although she may now consider Manmohan an electoral liability, the fact is that they are caught in a deadly embrace, the unlocking of which will mean an admission of failure or guilt for one and the vexatious question of whom to appoint as replacement for the other. To complicate matters, the Prime Minister is not quite willing to throw in the towel. In April, he openly said that he had neither confirmed nor ruled out a third term. And then there is the matter of his legacy. At the moment, the trail of every major scam that has hit the UPA, whether 2G, CWG or Coalgate, has reached his desk in which he can’t even use the famous words of the Watergate- scarred Nixon presidency, ‘ plausible deniability’. Also, the sacking of Kumar, who was only trying to defend the Prime Minister in Coalgate, must have strained his bonds of fealty to the Gandhis.
Of course, the Congress has come out to deny any rift between its two top leaders. Curiously, it took two statements on consecutive days by Congress General Secretary Janardan Dwivedi to partially stamp out widespread talk about a rift. Our cover story, written by Special Correspondent Kumar Anshuman and Senior Editor Bhavna Vij- Aurora, finds that the official Congress denials are unconvincing. The tension between Manmohan and Sonia extends to other issues, including policy ( Food Security Bill) and personnel ( key appointments). Significantly, in off- the- record conversations, lieutenants of both chief protagonists admit that all is not well in the House of Congress.
This may not be the first time that the Prime Minister and Congress president have differed. But it is surely the worst time for disagreement to flare up. The next General Elections are within 12 months. A tainted, incumbent Congress has an uphill task. It can only be made harder by infighting.