“If you want to become PM, stay in mock parliament your entire life; your turn won’t come,” Union Home Minister Amit Shah warned Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi.
Rhetoric apart, Shah was not off the mark. On the one hand he was questioning Rahul’s ability, but on the other also ruling out the possibility of the BJP being unseated.
While the second is perhaps wishful thinking, on the first many would tend to agree with Shah.
As for the mock parliament, the Opposition bloc recently organised one, with a bid to symbolically impeach Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar.
The CEC is in the eye of a storm for allegedly manipulating electoral rolls to influence the elections in favour of the saffron party.
“Rahulji, listen to me. Two days ago, you held a mock parliament. If you had asked me, I would have suggested that in this mock parliament, you become prime minister once without having to become the Leader of the Opposition. Why? Because you will never be able to become prime minister in the real parliament. You can become one in a mock parliament, and that may bring peace to Soniaji’s heart,” Shah said.
While election outcomes are unpredictable and votes can swing either way, one cannot dismiss what Shah said. As of now, ground reality does support Shah’s contention.
Take for instance the results of the by-polls held last month. Of the six seats that were contested, the BJP bagged both seats in West Bengal and that too with a huge margin. It also won a Lok Sabha seat in Assam while NDA partner All India NR Congress retained Puducherry. This was enough for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to say that NDA’s victory in the by-polls substantiates the people’s “deep rooted connect” with the NDA.
Even in the MLC elections held in the last week of October the Congress drew a blank. “MLC elections in 28 seats across 4 big states…. Guess how many seats Congress won?” Modi posted on X.
For the record, the by-elections covered 28 Legislative Council seats across Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar and Karnataka. Congress had contested 12 seats, but failed to secure a victory in any of these.
Hammering the point, Modi took a swipe at the Congress and said that these elections were conducted using ballot papers. It is common knowledge that the Congress has been campaigning against the use of electronic voting machines.
Earlier Shah had said: “lies, confusion, and malicious propaganda of Rahul Gandhi and the INDI Alliance, the BJP is winning one election after another under Modi’s leadership”.
Repartee apart, it would be incorrect to say that the BJP is not nervous about Rahul’s campaigns. It clearly is.
Even as Congress-led INDIA bloc held its Vote Bachao, Desh Bachao, or Save the Vote, Save the Country, mega rally against the Special Intensive Revision exercise in New Delhi, Shah led a high-profile “Save Democracy, Eliminate Anarchy, padayatra, foot march. However, it is not a coincidence that the BJP did this within 24 hours of the Congress rally.
That notwithstanding, Shah’s statement about Rahul’s PM ambition being a pipe dream has substance.
While one cannot deny that Rahul has shaped up rather well in the past few years, one must also accept that he still has a long way to go.
Dissecting the plus and minus, the positives are that Rahul is perhaps one of the few who has managed to activate an otherwise passive Opposition. While there are gaps in the overall unity of the INDIA bloc, on substantive issues they come across as united.
Rewind to 2024 when the red book that Rahul carried in his pocket punctured BJP’s abki baar 400 paar, or winning 400 plus seats, spiel.
For the uninitiated, the red book is a pocket edition of the Constitution of India that Rahul routinely carried in his pocket all through his election campaigns. He hammered the point that if the BJP is voted back to power, it would alter the Constitution to its advantage adversely affecting the interests of the backwards, Scheduled Castes and underprivileged sections of society. This worked wonders: the BJP which was looking at a 400-plus seat-tally could not even touch the majority mark.
One would recall that it was with great effort that it stitched up alliances to retain power and retain Narendra Modi as prime minister for a third term.
What is more significant is that in 2024 the BJP was at its peak. Therefore, a performance as dismal as winning a mere 240 seats was clearly a shocker. As against this, the Opposition alliance, or the INDIA bloc, bagged 234 seats: just seven short of what the BJP got.
More importantly, the Congress bagged 99 seats. It may sound like an exaggeration, but the fact remains that the red book and Rahul’s “BJP will change the Constitution” did the trick.
Since then Rahul has had a political makeover and from a part-time politician has emerged as one willing to take issues head on. Not only has he occupied centre stage, but shaped up as an effective street fighter, ever willing to be pushed, man-handled and even arrested at the drop of a hat.
The comparison may not be appropriate, but Gandhi has taken to the streets as effectively as Mamata Banerjee did when she took on the firmly entrenched CPM in West Bengal. She took more than 15 years to end the 34 year rule of the Communists.
Banerjee fought tooth and nail and vowed never to enter the Writers’ Building that housed the state secretariat. The reason: public humiliation at being dragged by her hair when she demanded an audience with the then Chief Minister Jyoti Basu. “I will never”, Banerjee had then said, “set foot inside Writers Building until the Left regime is dismantled”. True to her word, it was only after 18 years that she climbed the same stairs from which she was dragged down, after being sworn in as chief minister.
But then Rahul Gandhi is not Mamata Banerjee: to be like her is not in his DNA. Banerjee is a woman of struggle; Rahul perhaps is not. Unlike Banerjee, who is wedded to politics, Rahul likes his “me time” by way of sojourns abroad and fun holidays.
But this is not about comparing the two. It is about driving home a point that Rahul has emerged as a street fighter. On that count, he is doing exceptionally well. Not only is he steering the Opposition’s anti-government campaigns, but is fast emerging as the one who is a challenger to the BJP.
But it is here that one must stop because challenging the BJP is not synonymous with being in power or eyeing the office of the prime minister. On that count there is a huge gap.
While Gandhi has been able to capture public imagination as one who is in the forefront flagging the misdeeds of the BJP, it is not a Rahul versus Prime Minister Modi situation.
On that count, there is no toss-up. Even the bitterest of Modi’s critics would concede that when it comes to the country, Modi has the capacity and grit to lead it, take mature decisions and steer it towards stability.
As against this, Rahul Gandhi fails to present a picture of being an astute and prudent politician. Therefore, if the man on the street is asked whether Rahul is prime minister material, the answer is likely to be in the negative. Counter this with whether he is a successful Opposition leader, and he would, perhaps, get a thumbs up.
Therefore, when Shah says that Rahul can be prime minister only in a mock parliament, he is right.
Equally, to dismiss the issues Gandhi is flagging as “lies, confusion, and malicious propaganda” is living in a fool’s paradise.
Gandhi may not, and in all likelihood will not, make it as prime minister in the near future, but that does not translate into Narendra Modi getting another term or the BJP retaining power. Like there is no toss-up between Rahul and Modi on the issue of prime ministership, on the issue of governance, Congress losing elections does not mean that the BJP will continue to rule.
—The writer is an author, journalist and political commentator
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