Gandhi saving tactic: Why Cong won't name Rahul PM candidate

It seems that Digvijaya Singh knew it all. The Congress Working Committee officially arrived at the same conclusion that he publicly spoke of only last week – that Rahul Gandhi would not be named the Congress party’s Prime Ministerial candidate. And that this decision was scripted by none other than Sonia Gandhi. But then there was some consolation for the cheer leaders, announced by another powerful general secretary, Janardan Dwivedi, after the meeting. “It is always clear who the leader is in Congress. It is never an issue for us. The resolution in today’s meeting says, This meeting of the AICC declares that the campaign of the elections will be headed by Rahul Gandhi”. While writing and adopting this resolution, the assembled high and mighty party leaders must have gone on the simplistic idea that public memory is short, and therefore no one would care to ask why Rahul Gandhi was not made the face of the party campaign after a day long brain storming sesstion at Surajkund in November 2012. At that time, it was announced that Rahul Gandhi would lead the party’s 2014 campaign and head a six-member poll coordination committee. Janardan Dwivedi who also made that announcement, went on to announce the formation of three sub-groups - a six-member pre-poll alliances sub-group headed by Defence Minister AK Antony, a 10-member manifesto and government programmes’ sub-group, also headed by Antony, and a seven-member communication and publicity sub-group headed by Digvijaya Singh. [caption id=“attachment_1344739” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  PTI[/caption] Fifteen months down the line, the status of these committees is not exactly known. But the one thing that is certain is that Rahul continues to be the reluctant prince, no matter what he told Dainik Bhaskar in an interview. His answers in that interview were mistakenly interpreted as his willingness to officially accept being a prime ministerial challenger, but didn’t in reality, reveal anything beyond what he had been saying in his public rallies. The Congress may be taking shelter behind its “our tradition” defence in not naming a prime ministerial candidate, but that has made the BJP pounce on them with the most obvious question – Is Congress trying to protect its first family from ultimate ignominy in the face of a near certain defeat in the coming elections? But a much bigger question that a number of ordinary Congress workers are asking, is whether the party has lost the appetite to fight aggressive challenger Narendra Modi and emerging challenger Arvind Kejriwal. The Congress decision also perpetuates the impression that the party has already conceded defeat and does not want Rahul to get into a personality fight with Modi who is miles ahead of him in the popularity rating charts. The recent state elections also proved that Rahul was not able to mobilise voters. In fact he was already setting diminishing returns for the party. His and mother Sonia’s populist schemes, food security and land acquisition acts did get any votes for the Congress. Rahul had banked heavily on these schemes to win elections in the four Hindi heartland states, but eventually did not find any takers. A total decimation in the assembly polls made Rahul switch from the avatar of right based entitlement giver to that of anti-corruption crusader. The slogan of one of the posters released by the Congress a day earlier, read Rahul ji ke nau hathiyar, door karenge bhrashtachar (The nine weapons of Rahul ji to end corruption),” the posters listed three laws and nine bills that the Congress-led UPA government intends to push in the next session of Parliament. “Rahul ji ka uddeshya, bhrastachar mukt desh (Rahul ji’s aim, a corruption-free India),” says another poster. But can these posters separate Rahul from the corrupt UPA regime? The Congress think tank obviously feels that people may be able to see a messiah in Rahul and accordingly hail his leadership even as he has proved to be a failure in mobilising popular support for his party. The recently concluded assembly elections, like several other elections in the past, have proved that a successful campaign revolves round a persona of the leader who personifies the ideology or principles of that party. But then once a leader is named, the performance of the party at the polls will have to accounted to his personal fortunes. The Congress is perhaps trying to avoid just that. A win is for Rahul, a loss is for the rank and file of the party, even if it is headed by his mother and himself. It looks like mother Sonia is again coming forward to protect her son, like she did two years ago after the fiasco of the UP assembly elections. The CWC decision not to name Rahul Gandhi punctured the hype around todays AICC conclave. It has also dampened the enthusiasm of diehard enthusiasts in the Congress party who had so eagerly looked forward to Rahul’s anointment as PM candidate.