Rahul Gandhi may not win, but he is here to stay

After releasing a new series of posters featuring only Rahul Gandhi, the Congress’s decision to declare the party vice-president the head of poll campaign, not the PM candidate of the party, is being seen as a means to protect him from a presidential style Modi Vs Rahul contest with the scales tipped heavily against him. Congress leader Janardan Dwivedi told the press on Thursday after the Congress high command meet that though all party leaders pressed for Rahul as PM, Sonia Gandhi said the decision on the PM candidate would be made come only at an appropriate times. [caption id=“attachment_1344265” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Rahul Gandhi. AP[/caption] Faced with pressure to name a PM candidate with the BJP having done so months ago, the Congress party is now saying they don’t have a tradition of naming a PM candidates. During a debate on CNN-IBN, Congress minister of state Shashi Tharoor reiterated that the party does not need to name a PM nominee, but that Rahul was the person who would lead the party in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. “Rahul is already in the battlefield and we have good chances of winning. Rahul has a clearly defined rule. He will lead the campaign and take the message out. We will run on a 10-year record of having made a difference in people’s lives. The president is Sonia Gandhi and then we have a leader who will lead us to the polls,” Tharoor said. Asked repeatedly who is the Congress captain right now, Tharoor said, “Rahul is the captain of the election campaign.” Despite Tharoor’s argument, questions remain on why, despite other leaders’ wishes to declare Rahul as PM nominee, Sonia Gandhi continued to disagree? Was it not creating confusion among Congress supporters and also setting an example of dynastic politics where the leader takes decisions on their whims? “The fact is that the president of the party takes a last call… In any party the chief to have the final call. There are good sound strategic reasons why people should keep their options open. We intend to win, and when we have done that we will see what is to be done,” Tharoor said on CNN-IBN. “It is not uncommon that the Congress has not decided on a PM candidate. Also, there are many occasions when if Sonia Gandhi has not felt so strongly about something she is convinced by the others,” he said. Meanwhile, Outlook’s Vinod Mehta was of the opinion that it was only creating confusion among party cadre and supporters. “Janardan Dwivedi was clear that all the CWC members wanted Rahul as the PM nominee. The meeting was going out of hand and that is when Sonia exercised her veto. They shouldn’t have built all that hype around Rahul, and there wouldn’t have been an anti-climax at the last moment,” Mehta said during the debate. “If the intention was to make this type of announcement, then they should have prepared for that, it is causing more confusion than clarity,” he added. Looking at other possible aspects of the Congress decision, Manini Chatterjee, Editor (National Affairs) of The Telegraph said that may be the Congress was keeping its options open. “Rahul is not the leader of the UPA, he is the leader of the Congress. The Congress decision is tactical. They are not trying to protect Rahul. It is that they don’t want to make it a Modi vs Rahul election,” she said. She added that it made sense to keep options open for a post-poll scenario where the leader of the UPA will have to be picked and the PM candidate will have to be a collective choice of the coalition. Columnist Pushpesh Pant too said Rahul should not be blamed for shirking responsibility. “I don’t think Sonia is protecting her son and we should not blame Rahul for shirking responsibility. Congress is right now an interesting creature. It has always had a high command which decides who will be the leader,” he said. So is this the end of the PM game for Rahul, or does he stand another chance? Is the Congress going into the elections with Rahul as the front runner knowing that they will lose. Chatterjee said, “Rahul Gandhi is here to stay. If today BJP loses, no one knows what will happen to Narendra Modi in the next five years. But Rahul has age on his side. Even if the party loses he has the chance of reviving it.” Tharoor agreeing to Chatterjee’s argument said, “We don’t expect to lose. Rahul has every prospect of being number one. He is not here for a one day match, but for a whole series.”