Triple whammy for Congress: Gambits fail, Singh ain't king and Rahul ain't smart
The past week has not been a good one for the United Progressive Alliance in general and the Congress in particular. At least three of their electoral trump cards have been threatened, if not all of them nixed, by circumstances unforeseen by the party top bosses.
The fire which rages in Andhra Pradesh as this article is being written has already begun to singe the very hands that plotted a deft political masterstroke to gain more than a few parliamentary seats from the Telangana region. As the UPA government grapples with the aggressive whiplash over the Union Cabinet's Thursday decision, giving a go-ahead to the creation of a separate Telangana state, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is expected to take a call on Saturday on the resignations of three Union Ministers who quit office following the decision. All three ministers, K Chiranjeevi, Pallam Raju and Kotla Surya Prakash Reddy are from the Seemandhra region of Andhra Pradesh which has witnessed massive protests in the past two days.
In the presence of thousands of his supporters, YSR Congress president Jaganmohan Reddy has begun an indefinite fast in Hyderabad. Asking the Centre to reverse its decision, Jagan said there was no precedent to initiate the process for the division of a state without moving a resolution in the concerned state assembly.
The other political master plan which included Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi's cameo in a deus ex machine thwarting the ordinance aimed at protecting convicted MPs and MLAs met its nemesis when the main actor used language which was not part of the script. In a three-and-a-half-minute shoot-and-scoot session, the Congress scion referred to the ordinance as being "nonsense" which should be "torn and thrown away" , forcing the otherwise expressionless Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to wear an expression of utter misery. While Singh sort of lip-synched that he had learnt to take things in his stride, the BJP's prime ministerial candidate and Gujarat Chief Minister who suddenly saw his heart bleed for the PM lashed at the young leader for not having learnt to be more respectful. The saffron party patriarch, LK Advani, drove the last nail in the coffin of this Congress master plan by saying that President Pranab Mukherjee, and not Rahul, had nixed the ordinance.
Earlier, on September 23, the Supreme Court put the brakes on the Congress's flagship programme -- the direct benefits transfer scheme -- by restraining the government from making the Aadhaar card mandatory for existing social welfare benefit schemes. The order threatened the party's plans to use the direct transfer of benefits as a talking point in the upcoming General Elections. The party had even coined a slogan 'Apkaa paisa aapke haath' to sell the scheme. Launched on January 1, the direct benefits transfer programme has been expanded to 28 schemes in 121 districts. The Centre has now sought a modification of the apex court's order on Aadhaar.
With Modi mania on the rise and most of the Congress's plans failing, the party leaders have retreated into a shell - of course, discounting the occasional banter by general secretary Digvijaya Singh which is more of a force of habit than anything official.
The fire which rages in Andhra Pradesh as this article is being written has already begun to singe the very hands that plotted a deft political masterstroke to gain more than a few parliamentary seats from the Telangana region. As the UPA government grapples with the aggressive whiplash over the Union Cabinet's Thursday decision, giving a go-ahead to the creation of a separate Telangana state, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is expected to take a call on Saturday on the resignations of three Union Ministers who quit office following the decision. All three ministers, K Chiranjeevi, Pallam Raju and Kotla Surya Prakash Reddy are from the Seemandhra region of Andhra Pradesh which has witnessed massive protests in the past two days.
In the presence of thousands of his supporters, YSR Congress president Jaganmohan Reddy has begun an indefinite fast in Hyderabad. Asking the Centre to reverse its decision, Jagan said there was no precedent to initiate the process for the division of a state without moving a resolution in the concerned state assembly.
The other political master plan which included Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi's cameo in a deus ex machine thwarting the ordinance aimed at protecting convicted MPs and MLAs met its nemesis when the main actor used language which was not part of the script. In a three-and-a-half-minute shoot-and-scoot session, the Congress scion referred to the ordinance as being "nonsense" which should be "torn and thrown away" , forcing the otherwise expressionless Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to wear an expression of utter misery. While Singh sort of lip-synched that he had learnt to take things in his stride, the BJP's prime ministerial candidate and Gujarat Chief Minister who suddenly saw his heart bleed for the PM lashed at the young leader for not having learnt to be more respectful. The saffron party patriarch, LK Advani, drove the last nail in the coffin of this Congress master plan by saying that President Pranab Mukherjee, and not Rahul, had nixed the ordinance.
Earlier, on September 23, the Supreme Court put the brakes on the Congress's flagship programme -- the direct benefits transfer scheme -- by restraining the government from making the Aadhaar card mandatory for existing social welfare benefit schemes. The order threatened the party's plans to use the direct transfer of benefits as a talking point in the upcoming General Elections. The party had even coined a slogan 'Apkaa paisa aapke haath' to sell the scheme. Launched on January 1, the direct benefits transfer programme has been expanded to 28 schemes in 121 districts. The Centre has now sought a modification of the apex court's order on Aadhaar.
With Modi mania on the rise and most of the Congress's plans failing, the party leaders have retreated into a shell - of course, discounting the occasional banter by general secretary Digvijaya Singh which is more of a force of habit than anything official.
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