Ever since the Congress faced an embarrassing defeat during the Lok Sabha polls this year, the grand old party has been trying to find a scapegoat in order to defend the party high command which has failed miserably. The head of the Congress’ Analytics Department, Praveen Chakravarty is one such functionary who has come under vocal criticism. He has been criticised severely for allegedly misleading the party leadership into believing that a massive political resurgence for the Congress was on cards.
Recently, two big investigative media stories came out quoting anonymous sources within the grand old party. The central theme of both the stories was identical- Praveen Chakravarty misled the Congress. He has been blamed for ‘working in silos’, ‘being arrogant’, ‘un-cooperative’ and other such epithets. In fact, in the ET story, one of the party insiders even called him a ‘super insider’ of the party for the last six months, essentially saying that everything that happened within the party was done through Chakravarty. In fact, as per the version given by the insider, he was the single point of contact for the Congress President, Rahul Gandhi and the real world. Therefore, the Congress president could not make clear decisions as he was being misled by Chakravarty. A Sunday Guardian report even called him a ‘mole of BJP’, quoting a Congress leader.
Last month, Praveen Chakravarty had countered the media reports blaming him for the defeat. Now, he has tweeted, “Heartbreaking to watch India lose to New Zealand & crash out of the cricket world cup.
Led valiantly by their captain, India had a string of remarkable wins & fought hard in this crucial game but lost.
Wisely, the team’s support staff is not being blamed solely for this defeat.”
Heartbreaking to watch India lose to New Zealand & crash out of the cricket world cup.
Led valiantly by their captain, India had a string of remarkable wins & fought hard in this crucial game but lost.
Wisely, the team’s support staff is not being blamed solely for this defeat.— Praveen Chakravarty (@pravchak) July 11, 2019
With this tweet about India’s loss against New Zealand during the World Cup semi-final, Chakravarty seems to have given a very sharp message. With this tweet, he has made it clear that when the team lost a match, it wasn’t the support staff which was blamed. By making reference to the World Cup defeat, he has taken a dig at those who were blaming him for the Congress’ debacle during the Lok Sabha polls.
The fact remains that the analytics head couldn’t have staged a turnaround when the party and its leadership didn’t really enjoy much popularity among the electorate. Rahul Gandhi had already failed time and again as a party leader in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and when the brand itself has failed miserably, there is not much that the support staff can do. It’s time the Congress accepts that it was Rahul Gandhi who failed and failed miserably at that during the Lok Sabha polls. There is no real point in finding scapegoats and blaming them for a contest which Rahul Gandhi lost. Chakravarty’s tweet has put things in the correct perspective. Congress, led by a clueless Rahul Gandhi, stood no real chance as against the BJP led by a statesmanlike Narendra Modi. There was absolutely nothing that Chakravarty or anyone else could have done at that point of time.