Raj Babbar, Imran Masood appointments reveal bankruptcy of ideas and talent in Congress

There are two ways of looking at the Congress decision to install Raj Babbar as Uttar Pradesh unit chief and make Imran Masood — he of ‘chopping up Modi into little pieces’ fame — one of the four vice-presidents under his command. One, Congress is placing a huge premium on minute strategising around caste and community equations to tackle one of the toughest Assembly elections. In this line of thinking, influenced perhaps by strategist Prashant Kishor, leaders are mere chess pieces on a checkered gameboard and must fit into a whole. Two, there is such dearth of talent in its ranks, such an acute lack of astute helmsmen with acumen, political base and appeal that it has had to fall back on a tested failure as state president and a tainted man as one of his deputies. The only rationale behind the move could be that Babbar will serve as the veritable Gandhi-screen lotion, should Congress fail miserably to pull off the Priyanka stunt. Public memory is short. Electoral reverses are shorter still. Once upon a time in 2009, Babbar had defeated UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple in 2009 in a Lok Sabha by-election. Five years later, during the general elections, the actor-turned-politician went down by a humiliating margin of 5.67 lakh votes against General (Retd) VK Singh from the Ghaziabad constituency. He has done nothing of note since to dispel the notion of a political lightweight flitting around without a purpose. [caption id=“attachment_1465859” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] If not electoral brilliance, one of the reasons why the balance tilted in Raj Babbar’s favour could be his caste. News18[/caption] If not electoral brilliance, one of the reasons why the balance tilted in Babbar’s favour could be his caste. The 64-year-old Congress spokesperson, said to be a vigorous campaigner, belongs to the Sonar community (goldsmiths), listed as an Other Backward Caste or OBC in UP. If Sheila Dikshit, a Brahmin, is announced as the chief ministerial candidate — a decision the party has deferred till the campaign begins — then it stands to reason that Congress is trying to win back its original constituency of Muslims, Brahmins and a slice of non-Dalit Other Backward Castes. The four deputies chosen for the role certainly give such an impression. The appointments of Raja Ram Pal, Bhagwati Prasad Chaudhary, Imran Masood and former MP Rajesh Mishra are targeted at balancing out the delicate caste, community and religious combination. Raja Ram Pal belongs to a backward caste, Chaudhary is chairman of the state unit’s Scheduled Caste department, Mishra is a Brahmin from Varanasi and Masood, of course, is a Muslim leader. All the primary votebanks of Samajwadi party, the BJP and Bahujan Samaj Party would be taken care of. Single-minded focus on electoral strategy also explains why Congressman Masood, who was jailed in March 2014 for his hate-speech against Modi, was brought back into political mainstream at the risk of attracting stinging criticism. Masood, 45, who was the Congress Lok Sabha candidate from Saharanpur in 2014, was arrested and sent to judicial custody for 14 days, soon after he threatened to “chop up” BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Modi into pieces during an electoral speech. He was granted bail on 29 March that year and later issued a clarification, saying he only meant that he wanted to “teach Modi a lesson”. That the Congress will brazen out the controversy becomes clear looking at the comments made by two of its senior leaders since the appointment. On Wednesday, Salman Khurshid tried to explain that “Modi ka boti boti kar dunga” was merely a metaphor and Congress’s vice-president in UP didn’t really mean what he had said. “Metaphors, these are metaphors and you cannot hold a person down for metaphors they speak and I am sure that he has been given guidance and counselling as far as this is concerned and I don’t believe that you would have heard something similar since then, " Salman Khurshid told news agency ANI. Ghulam Nabi Azad, the party’s general secretary in charge of Uttar Pradesh, was more combative. Questioned on the controversial choice, Azad said: “Why don’t you ask the BJP of their ministers who are hate-mongers?” A report in 2014, quoting the self-sworn affidavit filed by Masood for contesting Lok Sabha polls, had revealed that there were four cases against him pending trials in Saharanpur courts and one in district court in Lucknow. The cases were filed under different sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), including cheating (Section 420), forgery of valuable security (Section 467), forgery for purpose of cheating (Section 468) and voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty (Section 332) among others, the affidavit said. Ra Besides, a case is being heard against Masood  for charges of intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace (Section 504 of IPC) and punishment for criminal intimidation (Section 506) among others, it said. Congress’s bankruptcy in ideas and talent is evident. Can ‘master strategist’ Prashant Kishor wave his wand? Or will India’s grand old party finally burst his bubble?