Congress has no appetite for battle

It is a paradox, if one may call it so, of a situation, for the Congress party in the twoTelugu States. The party has got nothing to lose in Telangana and in Andhra Pradesh, it has got nothing more to gain. The Congress has suffered in both the states by yielding to the desires of its senior leadership by 2014 to announce a Reorganization of AP, more to keep YS Jagan Mohan Reddy at bay. The party's high command had no appetite for Jagan's rebellion and decided to enforce the bifurcation of the State allowing theatrics behind the closed doors of the Parliament. The result: It lost in both the States miserably. The loss got accentuated in the 2019 elections with the Telangana Congress not only failing to beat the then Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) but also getting confined to the oblivion in the residual Andhra Pradesh.

Congress ituation in AP is understandable but why this 'democratic upheaval' in Telangana where the seniors have arranged themselves against their president, Revanth Reddy? Even a casual observer can dismiss it as 'Congress culture' because of the groups that are deliberately foisted and encouraged in the party. The Congress has slipped by a few notches in Telangana not only due to the Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao's maneuvers but also due to the aggressive BJP campaigns. The irony is that the BJP always faced the criticism that it does not have a strong leadership within the State. It is still experimenting with the available force. Yet, it managed to put up a real good show in the previous civil elections in Hyderabad as well in the by-elections. The erstwhile TRS in its present avatar of BRS fears only the BJP and not the Congress any longer as it is supremely confident that unity is a distant possibility among the Congressmen in the State.

Not being in power at both the Centre and the State, the local Congress leadership seems to have lost the appetite to counter the Chief Minister's moves. What should be of concern to the Congress high command is the infighting among its State leadership even in the face of the transitional blues of the BRS. The Congress is almost delivering Telangana by default to the BJP. The party is aiming to unseat Narendra Modi from power by trying its hand at everything. Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra is being touted as a success by the peddlers of secularism in the country.

Recent victory in Himachal Pradesh is not a flash in the pan, those sections argue. Accepted. But, why yield ground to BJP when you can strengthen yourselves further through some discipline? We have seen that in Gujarat and Delhi, the grand old party has been completely decimated and its situation is no different from that of Andhra Pradesh. It is time the Congress high command – not Rahul Gandhi – takes note of the situation and does some appropriate interventions. Rahul Gandhi does not seem to have inspired his cadres even with his yatra, having passed through Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. The only way he is impacting Rajasthan, too, looks undesirable. Differences between Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and his deputy Sachin Pilot are only getting harder and louder by the day. Of course, alas, that is the Congress for us!