Rahul Gandhi has promised to protect citizens who’s illegally constructed abodes face the bulldozer’s wrath. Among the other acts he put up on the same day, one was as described by a senior minister, the crybaby act. According to him, people who had nothing to do with a particular temple in Assam stopped him from entering it, and he was too incompetent to defy them. Pretending to be a superhero and creating a scene for being denied something, both in the span of a day, befit a lollipop-eating Pogo-watching child. But if it is not a child, if it is a forty something heir of the world’s largest democracy’s principle opposition party, then the world’s largest democracy has something to worry about.
The Congress government released funds to rehabilitate those living in Shakurbasti. Not a single house was built. According to Rahul’s itinerary, he wasn’t supposed to go to Barpeta Satra. According to locals, he stuck to his itinerary. A private function in Kerala which the prime minister has been invited to, is likely to remain out of bounds for the chief minister. The Shahi Imam coronation to which both Congressmen and Pakistanis were invited, remained out of bounds for our prime minister.
In the case of the Shakurbasti slum demolition, the Congress has not shied away from politicizing the death of a six month old child. The Aam Aadmi Party was of course the first to seize the opportunity, but this was on expected lines since hypocrisy has become its way of doing things. The Congress conveniently forgets that its government released eleven crore rupees to build four thousand houses for the slum dwellers. As is common with the party, the money seems to have been swindled. This makes them directly responsible for all Shakurbasti’s agony that the country is witness to. The party also conveniently forgets that the authorities were simply following an order of the green tribunal. But ‘contempt of court’ is a phrase that does not exist in the Congress dictionary. Also, who needs to follow Indian laws if one is the daughter in law of a former Indian dictator?
Barpeta Satra is a sixteenth century Vaishnavite monastery eighty kilometers west of Guwahati. Rahul Gandhi was to start yet another padyatra from there although his initial itinerary didn’t include visiting the monastery. According to locals this changed, and he decided that he would indeed visit it. But bad weather made him run late and he ended up starting his walk from another point which was closer to his final destination. He didn’t even attempt entering the temple. His statements about women from the RSS blocking his way and nobody having the right to stop him from entering a temple now look like failed attempts to defame the RSS and take a slight turn away from the usual pseudo-secularism. For the record, the temple has denied Rahul Gandhi ’s story and has categorically said that it is linked to the RSS in no way.
The prime minister has been invited to a private function in Kerala. Although there is a protocol that the chief minister should accompany the prime minister during the latter’s visits, nobody seems to know whether this applies for private functions as well. Whatever may be the case, the organizers of the function do not want the chief minister to attend due to an ongoing political feud. It is as straightforward as that. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that the prime minister, his office, or the government has nothing to do with this. And yet, these are the institutions which are being dragged into this controversy and maligned. The parliament was stalled over this as if people give a hoot about some politician’s ego being hurt.
These are desperate times for the Congress. The party led by Rahul Gandhi seems to be grabbing anything before it and spinning it in an awkward way. They seek to divert the growing attention that the National Herald case is generating.
This a party which claims to have done no wrong in the National Herald case, but has refused to face the law under some pretext or another. When finally they had no option, they decided to stall parliament claiming to be the victims of vendetta politics. They thought they would kill another bird with the same stone: GST. The move backfired since the government had nothing to do with the National Herald case and key reforms weren’t seeing the light of day. Some leaders came out and said that the parliament was being stalled for other reasons altogether, and this lie embarrassed the party further. So now it is on spree to hijack non-issues and shift focus. Let us, as citizens of the country, end this sham right here. Let us not entertain their cock and bull stories, let us treat them as closed chapters even if the mainstream media does not. And let us never forget one thing: more than a billion of us are being held to ransom because one mother and son duo fear their day in court.
