Sonia Gandhi wants to revive the infamous National Advisory Council for Rahul Gandhi. As per a report by News 18, NAC 2.0 would advise Rahul Gandhi and would have members like poverty glorifying Kaushik Basu, who finds the crumbling buildings of Kolkata attractive; Raghuram Rajan, who often tries to display himself as a neutral economist but bats for the Congress party in most of the cases; and political strategist Prashant Kishore.
The NAC, an advisory body set up by the UPA government to advise the then Prime Minister of India, ran the government in the country, while the PM was a meek watcher. The NAC was the brainchild of Sonia Gandhi who used the NAC to supersede the decisions taken by Manmohan Singh’s Cabinet. In a nasty show of power and connivance, the NAC rendered Manmohan Singh and the Cabinet powerless.
Sonia Gandhi ruled the country through her proxies of the National Advisory Council, a body filled with Marxist, radical leftist people who were borderline anti-nationals. The number of scams that emerged in the era of UPA-II could also be attributed to the NAC decisions which could not be overturned by even PM Manmohan Singh.
As revealed in the 2014 book ‘The Accidental Prime Minister’ by ex-PM Manmohan Singh’s media advisor Sanjaya Baru, the power resided with Congress President Sonia Gandhi rather than Mr Singh. The book alleges that Manmohan Singh was not the one controlling his own Cabinet. Furthermore, he did not have command over the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). The files meant for the PMO used to regularly land at 10 Janpath, the official residence of Congress President Sonia Gandhi. All this was done throughout the 10-year rule of the Congress, while Manmohan was reduced to a face and hand which carried out orders and signed on documents as per the direction of Sonia Gandhi.
The NAC had interfered in the drafting of several key bills including, the Right to Information Act, Right to Education Act, Employee Guarantee Act, and the Food Security Bill.
NAC consisted of various controversial members like Jean Dreze, who was detained by the Jharkhand Police for violating the code of conduct during the previous general election. A well-known Naxal sympathizer, Dreze had organized a public meet in highly sensitive Maoist affected Dumka in Jharkhand.
The fact that the PMO had to comply with their whims and fancies eroded the fundamentals of the power structure in the capital. NAC bypassed PMO, summoned officers, wrote to ministers, sought compliance on reports, and ensured UPA had no choice but to implement their recommendations and be on the same page.
Now Sonia Gandhi wants a similar body to advise Rahul Gandhi so that the Congress party can come to power in the next general election. However, the good thing is that Rahul Gandhi is never going to come to power, more so if the NAC is appointed to advise him. The people of the country hate the power structure where a few non-elected elites take the decisions for them, and this was visible throughout the UPA-II and the 2014 general election tally of the Congress party.
Before the 2019 general election, Congress marketed the NYAY scheme on the advice of people like Raghuram Rajan and the result was disastrous, and the advice of this new NAC is going to be disastrous for the party. So, people like Kaushik Basu, who have been reduced to Twitter trolls by the Modi government, are never going to be in the important position of the country.
