Rahul Gandhi snooping: Congress-led row is not about principle, but sycophancy

The Congress either has a great fascination for the farcical or it has mastered the art of shooting itself in the foot. Nothing explains it better than the party’s eagerness to make such hullaballoo over what appears to be nothing more than a routine police procedure. As the entire Congress jumped to attack the BJP-led NDA government over the so-called snooping incident, it also revealed the penchant of the party of taking sycophancy to the level of the ridiculous, even if it neither reflects well on the party nor its leader.

The Delhi Police maintains it is a part of routine exercise done on VVIP’s for security reasons, and Congress vice president is not the only one subjected to it. All senior leaders right from Atal Behari Vajpayee to Manmohan Singh have had to fill up similar forms. Both Narendra Modi and Sonia Gandhi, too, have undergone similar exercise.

“It will be an injustice to call the work of beat officers snooping. We ask our beat constables to maintain record of all protected persons in their beat,” BS Bassi, Delhi Police Commissioner, has said already. Before going to Rahul Gandhi’s residence the beat constable had been to the residence of senior BJP leader LK Advani too, police sources maintain. But the Congress would have none of it. What has irked party men is the official noting that seeks the mention of the Congress vice president’s friends and the places he frequented in the pro forma, something that the Gandhi scion too is protective about.

“It is both laughable and tragic,” said Abhishek Singhvi, Congress spokesperson. “Laughable because it does not make sense and tragic because it cuts at the very root of democratic free India with political opponent being free to say and do what they like,” he added.

What comes out clear in this episode – besides the fact that the party’s leaders do no fact check before jumping in to the protest mode — is that there may be many factions within the Congress but when it comes to leadership, they would do anything to defend the ‘family’. Congress workers organised a protest march and “sansad gherao” and didn’t even let both Houses of Parliament run during the first few hours on Monday. But the moot question remains the same, if Sonia Gandhi and other leaders have been filling up this form routinely, why the fuss over Rahul Baba? Did they not know about this procedure at all? But Congress remains on the offensive “there is a way to do these things, especially when the person is an SPG protected since childhood,” said Akhilesh Pratap Singh, national spokesperson for the party. With the Congress already pushing the NDA on the back foot in Parliament over issues like Land Acquisition Bill and release of separatist leader Masarat Alam, the BJP has been mostly been defensive over this issue.

“The same questions were put to senior parliamentarian LK Advani, BJP president Amit Shah and even Prime Minister Modi earlier,” said Venkaiah Naidu, Parliamentary Affairs Minister. “We should not make issues out of non-issues and create controversies over some questioning” he told reporters.

With the Gandhi scion on forced leave due to internal bickering within the party, Congress leaders have been keeping themselves busy by raising every issue possible against the ruling NDA. They hope that their actions will not go unnoticed by the high command, especially at a time when the organisation is slated for a major reshuffle. Whoever raised the bogey of Delhi Police snooping may have pressed the panic button a tad early. But in a party where loyalty outweighs merit, it is politically correct to be perceived as loyal even if it means looking absurd to the public.