© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Claiming that the Congress is controlling the narrative in the major Assembly election-bound states, senior Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Sunday predicted that the party was “certainly winning” Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh and probably trouncing the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) in Telangana. He acknowledged that the contest in Rajasthan was “very close” but hoped to pull it off in the end.
Rahul said the BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri’s slurs against the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) member Danish Ali in the Lok Sabha — followed by BJP MP Nishikant Dubey’s letter to Speaker Om Birla seeking an inquiry into “utterances” made by members during the discussion on Chandrayaan-3’s success in the House — were the ruling party’s attempts to distract and divert attention from the Congress’s demand for caste census. He said the idea of “One Nation, One Election” was also one of the BJP’s distraction strategies.
“I would say right now we are probably winning Telangana, we are certainly winning Madhya Pradesh, we are certainly winning Chhattisgarh. Rajasthan, we are very close and we think we will be able to win. So that is what it is looking like and by the way that is also what the BJP is also internally saying,” Rahul said at a conclave organised in Delhi by the Pratidin Media Network of Assam.
Rahul’s views on the Congress’s prospects in the poll-bound states, according to leaders, are in line with the findings of the party’s internal surveys. One internal survey has forecast that the party is set to win 50-55 seats in Telangana, marginally behind the BRS that is predicted to bag 55-60 seats. While political parties generally exude confidence of victory in the run-up to elections — the BJP often crafts slogans around seat targets such as “abki baar, 300 paar (next time, more than 300 seats)” ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections — it is rare for a leader to publicly admit that the contest is very close in a state.
‘BJP trying to distract’
Rahul claimed that the BJP wins elections by diverting attention from the issues the Congress tries to raise. The Opposition party, he added, had adapted and learnt to deal with such tactics. “We learnt a very important lesson in Karnataka. And the lesson was that the BJP wins elections by distracting and not allowing us to construct our narrative. So what we did in Karnataka (was that) we fought the election in a way where the BJP could not define the narrative. What you are seeing today is that this gentleman Mr (Ramesh) Bidhuri and then suddenly this Mr Nishikant Dubey … this is all the BJP trying to distract from the idea of the caste census. They know that the caste census is a fundamental thing that the people of India want and they don’t want to have that discussion,” he said.
“So every time we bring a point on the table they use this type of stuff to distract… And we have learnt now how to deal with it. So what did we do in Karnataka? We gave a clear vision for the state, this is the social security programme that we are going to set up for you and then we control the narrative. If you look at the Telangana election, we are controlling the narrative. The BJP is not even in the narrative now. It is gone,” he said.
The Congress leader added, “In fact, the BJP has been decimated, it is over in Telangana. If you look at the narrative in Madhya Pradesh, we are controlling the narrative. If you look at the narrative in Chhattisgarh we are controlling the narrative no matter what the BJP tries to do. They are not capturing the narrative anymore. We are also adapting and learning.”
Talking about the Lok Sabha elections, Rahul said, “So don’t think the Opposition isn’t capable of adapting. We are adapting, we are working together. We are 60% of India’s population. BJP is in for a surprise in 2024.”
The Congress MP alleged that the government came up with the idea of a special session to distract from media revelations on the Adani group. He alleged that the initial plan of the government was to change India’s name to Bharat but there was a huge backlash after which they came up with the women’s reservation Bill.
The Congress is a late entrant to the chorus of political parties demanding caste census. Rahul asserted that a caste headcount was a “fundamental thing that the people of India want” and the BJP wants to avoid a discussion on the topic. Parties such as the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Janata Dal (United), Samajwadi Party (SP), and DMK have been demanding a caste headcount for long.
Even though the UPA government conducted a socioeconomic and caste census, the Congress was silent on the issue for a long time. In many ways, it is a course correction and the grand old party’s attempt to reach out to the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) that first moved away from the Congress in the early 1990s after the Mandal report triggered a new wave of politics and has largely embraced the BJP since 2014.
