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Leading the Congress charge in Parliament on Friday, Priya Ranjan
Das Munshi put up the party's bravest face. The Congress had
fallen in the past, said onetime Young Turk from West Bengal, only
to rise again. Analysts point to a fourth possible scenario
emerging from the current political stalemate - the Congress reborn
from the ashes.
Party MP and Kesri loyalist Ajit Jogi echoes his leader's
sentiments when he complains that Deve Gowda was out to destroy the
Congress. "Far from co-operating with the Congress, we found him
willingly or unwillingly, tacitly or openly intentionally and
unintentionally, out to harm, the party," he accuses the Prime
Minister Other Kesri loyalists are happy that he has won the first
round by dethroning Deve Gowda. Even those who hold different
views on Kesri's strategy had to fall in line.
As Congress MP from West Bengal Pradip Bhattacharyya argued, the
Congress show off unity was also a desperate act of defence
mechanism. The party's hope of a renewal and return to power would
have been doomed forever in the event of another split. Dissenters
like Pawar and Pilot therefore did not dump Kesri during the vote
on the confidence motion.
Kesri loyalists claim that this was the party chief's second major
victory.
He not only deposed Gowda but also managed to keep the party flock
together. At least for the time being. Kesri's supporters have
argued that the party could only gain by voting Gowda out. With its
142 members, the party could not be expected to be forever outside
a government it has kept alive. Moreover, staying out of power was
daily proving costlier for the party as it got entangled in case
after case.
The third argument of the Kesri camp is that' even in the event of
an election, the party could not do worse than now Kesri's move is
seen by this section as a last ditch attempt to lift the sagging
morale of partymen and bring them closer to power. If the last
elections had not given the party power and if there was little
hope of achieving it by any other means, it had to be a desperate
gamble. The party could not just sit around, helplessly watching
the BJP and the UF decimate it. went the Kesri camp's argument.
Breaking the UF is thus the first priority for the Congress - to
try and form a government now as well as for the next election.
Since it cannot hope to stop an unstoppable BJP, except in stray
cases, the Congress has to embark on the task of edging more and
more into the non-BJP political space. The Congress strategists
are said to have assessed that in several states like West Bengal,
Bihar, Karnataka and Rajashthan it can actually improve its
position in a snap poll because of popular sentiments against the
non-Congress ruling parties in these states.
The problem with this scenario is that even Congressmen are
sceptical of these projections, which they believe have been spread
only to confuse them. The final proof of the absurdity of these
projections is, say these critics, that even Kesri is not talking
of elections. In fact, so agitated are his party MPs at the
possibility of an imminent election that some observers expect a
change of leadership in the Congress sooner than in the UF - and
another round of bitter power struggle among the ever-feuding
Congress satraps.
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