The Congress Party has just escaped from a double whammy by tying up with the Samajwadi Party (SP) for the upcoming assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh.
It was a touch-and-go affair as the new SP president and state Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav almost called off the seat-sharing talks as he sensed that both Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka were acting pricey.
Although the Gandhi scions had initially talked to Yadav directly, when the time came for a sit-down negotiation for seats, the Congress Party sent Prashant Kishor and Dhiraj Kumar Srivastava whose own political credentials are nothing to brag about.
Kishor’s claim to fame is that he strategised Narendra Modi’s march to victory in the 2014 parliamentary elections and then jumped ship, as it were, to manoeuvre Nitish Kumar into chief ministership of Bihar the following year.
Srivastava is a former Rajasthan government employee who has been with the Gandhis for more than a decade and loyalty is his calling card.
Rahul Gandhi enticed Kishor who, apparently, was willing to provide his services to the highest bidder. So, there is no ideological baggage for Kishor to drag along. But this also means he is a political lightweight and having to deal with someone of that rank, especially when he had just won a battle of wits against his own father, reportedly annoyed Akhilesh Yadav who threatened to field SP candidates in all 403 constituencies.
Before the Election Commission of India (ECI) ruled in favour of Akhilesh and against his father and party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav on the party symbol issue, the chief minister was reportedly ready to concede as many as 142 seats to the Congress.
Senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad says his party had wanted “a respectable number of 150 seats spread across the state” to accommodate all castes and religions. So, we must take it that what the party eventually got - 105 seats - is not exactly “respectable”.
But with the ECI recognising his claim to the symbol as well as presidency of the party, Akhilesh was in no mood to relent. And then the Gandhis sent two lowly partymen to seal the deal even though the Congress Party maintained that the two were not invested with any powers to negotiate nor were they expected to.
But all is well that ends well, for the Congress Party was looking down the barrel of near-obliteration in the state and a pre-poll arrangement with the ruling party in the state can only do Rahul Gandhi’s party good. With Priyanka Gandhi getting ready for a much wider campaign role, the Congress can hope for a better showing this time around.
How it will play out for the SP is a different matter altogether. The Yadavs, as a community, had been brought up on a steady anti-Congress diet for decades by Mulayam Singh and suddenly they find themselves on the same side and are asked to support and vote for the Congress. There is bound to be confusion and consternation.
And then there is the Shivpal Yadav factor for Akhilesh to contend with. The chief minister’s uncle has been delivered a slap in the face in the symbol imbroglio and although he himself has secured a ticket to fight the polls, Shivpal is not the kind to sit quiet and take things as they come.
Back to the Congress Party though. Just as well that there is a tie-up with the top state party because Rahul Gandhi had suffered a major blow to his credibility just over a week ago when the Supreme Court threw out an attempt to charge Prime Minister Modi with corruption. Although Rahul did not have anything to do with the case directly, he had gone to town with what he claimed was evidence to “burst the balloon” of the prime minister. The apex court said the so-called evidence was nothing but a scrap of paper.
An alliance with the Samajwadi Party is certainly more to the benefit of Rahul Gandhi than to Akhilesh Yadav, so the Congress vice-president has some reason to cheer.
But the person rejoicing the most is three-time former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dixit. She had very reluctantly agreed to be hoisted as the chief ministerial candidate of the Congress Party for UP. She obviously did not want to leave Delhi – if she and her party were to win power in UP, a very remote possibility, one might add – but being the “disciplined soldier of the party” that she is, Dixit put up a brave face and said she was up to it. She knew she was in for a drubbing either way, but a seasoned politician has to take setbacks in her stride.
Then came Rahul Gandhi’s “earth-shattering” allegations against Modi. Unfortunately, Dixit also was alleged to be one of the beneficiaries of the said payoff, but Rahul presumably thought she can be sacrificed if he can get Modi’s scalp. Dixit had denied any wrongdoing and had also maintained that the diary jottings on which the case was supposed to be based were all spurious.
So when the court eventually snubbed the plaintiff, lawyer Prashant Bhushan representing the NGO, Common Cause, Dixit’s sigh of relief was heard all over Delhi. And now with the yoke of UP chief ministerial candidate off her shoulders, Dixit has every reason to smile as broadly as she is wont to.
It’s a make or break budget for Modi
“A very pro-poor, pro-development budget that addresses the need of the hour. I congratulate the finance minister for his vision” – Narendra Modi.
“A totally pro-rich, pro-corporate budget that will bring further distress to the rural poor and the common man” – Rahul Gandhi.
Haven’t we heard all this before? Probably the words were different, but the sentiments could not be anything but the same. You have the government on the one side praising its finance minister and the opposition on the other trying to pick holes in the biggest annual economic exercise. And yes, you are going to hear the same once again very soon.
With elections to five state assemblies beginning the same week as the budget, there is extra interest in what Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is going to do. If he goes for sops and doles, there is going to be a major outcry from the opposition. The ECI will not also take kindly to any special provisions in the budget that are aimed at the states going to polls. In fact, it has forbidden Jaitley from doing any such thing.
Jaitley has been given the go-ahead by the Supreme Court to present the federal budget on February 1 as planned. The court threw out appeals that the budget should not be presented before March 11, the last day of polling in Uttar Pradesh.
Looks like Jaitley knew all along that he was on a strong wicket. Last week he had prepared the traditional ‘halwa’ for the officials of the finance minister in charge of printing the budget papers. About 100 of these officials have to spend nearly a fortnight confined to the underground space of the printing presses and cannot have any contact with the outside world till the minister rises to present the budget proposals in parliament.
Jaitley had gone ahead and ordered printing of the budget papers and if, for any reason, the court had ordered postponement of the presentation, these officials would have been spending a long cloistered life. Luckily that did not happen.
There are those who believe the main pro-poor, pro-farmer policies of the government have already been initiated by the prime minister himself during his New Year’s speech to the nation. They feel it is now the turn of the salary earner and the middleclass who had to put up with a lot of problems in the wake of the demonetisation of high value notes. Speculation is that several tax relief measures are on the anvil.
Whatever Jaitley will do there is no denying that this is going to be the most crucial budget for the Modi government.
The goods and services tax (GST) is set to take effect from July 1. Demonetisation is still a work in progress and, despite the entrenched positions, no one is absolutely certain it was a big success or a monumental failure. The world economy is nowhere near the healthy zone. America’s new president has declared a protectionist policy that will affect the entire world. Private investment to boost production and employment has not taken off the way the government had wanted. In the midst of all this, Jaitley has to present a “promising” budget. Some task that!
Delhi diary
