The irony of the Congress-mukt campaign
NEW DELHI: Uttarakhand became Congress-mukt on Sunday. That was about five weeks after Arunachal Pradesh was ‘freed’ from the party. It may have brought the BJP within striking distance of realising Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dream of “a Congress-mukt Bharat” but even die-hard BJP supporters can’t miss the irony.
The replacement and ouster of elected governments in these two states gave a sense of déjà vu — engineered defections, misuse of gubernatorial powers, avowal of innocence, and assertions of self-righteousness — much like the Congress of olden days. Congress governments invoked Article 356 to impose President’s Rule 88 out of 126 times since independence.
At the Vijay Sankalp rally in Goa in January 2014, Modi had said: “When I say Congress-mukt Bharat, I mean not only Congress party leaders but the culture Congress has come to represent.” But BJP has obviously found the Congress culture a little too tempting to resist as is evident from its actions in Itanagar and Dehradun.
As of Monday morning, the Congress still ruled seven states — Assam, Kerala, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram and Meghalaya. Two of them, Assam and Kerala, are headed for polls. Of the remaining five, the Congress government in Manipur is staring at a crisis with some dissident MLAs said to be in touch with BJP. The government in Mizoram seems safe as of now although the Raj Bhawan in Aizawl has been unstable with seven incumbents since the NDA came to power at the Centre.
INHERENT IN PM MODI’S SLOGAN OF A CONGRESS-MUKT BHARAT IS A ‘BJP-YUKT BHARAT’ OR BJPENABLED INDIA
When Modi started the campaign to ‘free’ India from Congress, it was centred around ‘development’, or the lack of it. There were millions who responded as the Congress was ousted not only from the Centre but also from Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir.
The party’s haste to topple Congress gover nments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, therefore, left many political observers perplexed. By a Congress-mukt Bharat, Modi said in Goa, he meant freedom from “corruption, communalism, divisions in society”. But the BJP has been simply dismissive about corruption scandals hitting many of its chief ministers and union ministers and also unmindful of their provocative utterances and actions. In Assam, it has made illegal immigrants, and not development, its central poll plank. As the BJP woos a section of Christians in Kerala, the PM recently met KP Yohannan, founder of the Gospel for Asia that is accused of embezzling millions of dollars in charitable donations.
The BJP is obviously working towards a larger political objective. Inherent in Modi’s slogan of a Congress-mukt Bharat is a ‘BJPyukt Bharat’ or BJP-enabled India. But its victory in Itanagar and Dehradun may turn out to be a pyrrhic one. No longer “the party with a difference”, it was showcasing “a government with a difference” at the Centre. The new slogan may have lost much of its appeal on Sunday.