The senior Congress leader and former finance minister P Chidambaram has stated that Gandhi scion may not be the PM face of the Congress party. In an interview, P Chidambaram said that the party will not project anyone as the PM face. This comes days after the Congress President Rahul Gandhi had said that he will become prime minister if allies want him. According to the Money Control report, Gandhi scion on 5th October said, “we have had discussions with allies and what we decided is that this is a two-stage process — one is to get together and defeat BJP and stage two is, once the election is over then we will decide what happens.”
It seems recent statement of P Chidambaram is result of the cold reaction of the anti-BJP parties to accept Rahul Gandhi as their leader. The anti-BJP parties of the proposed Mahagathbandhan against the BJP are not willing to work under the inept leadership of Rahul Gandhi. One of the anti-BJP leaders, Mamata Banerjee’s ambitions to become Prime Minister is not hidden from anyone. Mamata Banerjee has tried to sideline Rahul Gandhi given his weak leadership and organisational skills. Other leaders of anti-BJP Mahagathbandhan are not at all comfortable with the leadership of Rahul Gandhi. It seems the recent move of the Congress party as revealed by P Chidambaram is designed to placate the prospective allies.
Furthermore, Congress is wary of the damage in case of direct showdown between PM Modi and Rahul Gandhi as PM candidate could do to the electoral prospects of the party. When it comes to popularity, Rahul Gandhi is nowhere near to PM Modi. In an online survey carried out by The Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC), 48 per cent respondents voted Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the leader who would take the ‘agenda of the nation’ ahead. On the other hand, Rahul Gandhi got 11% votes whereas Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal occupied the third spot with 9.3% of votes. 57 lakh people from 712 districts voted in the survey that was open for 55 days.
The survey cements the fact that PM Modi is still the most popular leader among the people of the nation with a mammoth margin. On the other hand, Rahul Gandhi, despite so much media and social media PR, in terms of popularity he is near to Kejriwal. It shows that his tactic of ‘icchadhaari hindu’ is not at all working and people are abhorring such cheap attempts to appease the majority community for electoral gains. The gap of 400% in terms of popularity and preference between PM Modi and Rahul Gandhi is enough to prove that the nation wants to bring back PM Modi again in power in 2019. Such a huge margin also indicates that lies, misinformation and propaganda sponsored by the Lutyens’ cabal against PM Modi are not at all working. The efforts made by the cabal to malign the image of PM Modi are going in vain, and he continues to remain the most popular political leader.
By not projecting Rahul Gandhi as the PM face, the party not only wants to avoid direct confrontation and comparison with PM Modi but also save Rahul Gandhi from humiliation which he suffered in 2014 general elections. The Congress party which exists to serve the interest of Nehru-Gandhi family wants to save Rahul Gandhi from another 2014 like humiliation by not projecting him as the PM face of Mahagathbandhan.