RAHUL, PRIYANKA PROXY WAR PLAYS OUT IN CONGRESS

Rita Bahuguna Joshi chooses to hit at Rahul since Priyanka does not hold any formal position.

Former Uttar Pradesh Congress president Rita Bahuguna Joshi’s defection to the Bharatiya Janata Party has indicated that senior leaders are feeling suffocated and marginalised due to the ongoing struggle in the Congress between members of the Gandhi family, in order to gain supremacy in the country’s most populous state. Rita Bahuguna Joshi was hesitant to leave the grand old party where she held many prominent positions in the past 24 years, yet, all the same decided to switch to the BJP on realising that she was unwanted in the new scheme of things. She made up her mind to accept Amit Shah’s invitation after she was kept on hold for 20 minutes by Sonia Gandhi’s staff, when she rang up to return the Congress president’s telephone call. It was abundantly clear to her that she was irrelevant and the time had come to join her brother and former Uttarakhand Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna in the BJP, a paradigm shift that would have made their left leaning late father Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna highly uncomfortable.

In fact, Rita Bahuguna Joshi was the victim of a power struggle in the Gandhi household where on many matters even the siblings, Rahul and Priyanka, do not see eye to eye. On joining the BJP at a press conference, Bahuguna Joshi recalled her fond association with Sonia Gandhi, whom she praised for understanding the problems related to the organisation. However, she chose to be politically correct by hitting out at Rahul Gandhi, though she herself had been sidelined ever since Priyanka (who does not hold any formal position) began showing increasing interest in the political affairs of Ut- tar Pradesh. All the major appointees who are a part of the UP initiative of the Congress— including Raj Babbar, Sanjay Singh, Sheila Dikshit, Nirmal Khatri and Pramod Tewari—enjoy both the patronage and backing of Priyanka. Rahul may have roped in strategist Prashant Kishor, but his role has diminished in the past few months and he has been spending more time in Punjab, where he has developed a comfortable rapport with Captain Amarinder Singh. Kishor’s shaky position in UP became evident when he was overruled for recommending a younger Brahmin as the Chief Ministerial face by the top leadership, which settled for the 78-year-old Sheila Dikshit.

Bahuguna Joshi being an astute political person, was conscious that blaming Priyanka for her exit would not go down well with the cadres who want to see her inheriting the legacy of her grandmother Indira Gandhi, whose birth centenary celebrations would be kicked off next month. Rahul is perennially the easy fall guy for most Congress leaders, particularly those who have been very close to Sonia Gandhi and who hold him directly responsible for the plight of the party, while the truth is that they themselves have enormously contributed to the decline and fall of the Congress. Therefore, Bahuguna Joshi targeted Rahul instead of Priyanka, since the former is likely to be anointed as the party president in the future and is the obvious successor of Sonia Gandhi. Priyanka does not occupy any official position and is formally not a part of the Congress set up, though she is in total control of the organisation in UP.

In Uttar Pradesh, which is going to be the big battlefield next year, other than