Dr Devendra Pratap Singh, member of Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee, says Rahul’s stature will rise to unprecedented level at the end of Bharat Jodo Yatra. His views:
To understand the ongoing process for the election to the post of President of the Congress party, one needs to look at the selection of the new president of the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee, who is a BSP import. The day UPCC’s new President was announced, all old and dedicated Congressmen here in UP became very much disappointed.
First, they imported leftists into the UPCC, and now they have brought a president who has no roots in the Congress culture and ideology. Genuine Congressmen have been systematically sidelined in the last few years.
This is the real tragedy that the party is facing right now. And this reflects in the election process for central leadership too. There may be individual and differing opinions on whether Shashi Tharoor or Mallikarjun Kharge should become the new president. In my view, I truly feel that both of them could never come closer to Digvijay Singh in terms of a mass base, leadership credentials, and even loyalty to the family. But see how senior leaders have proposed Kharge’s candidature.
If I were to choose between Kharge and Tharoor only, I would prefer the latter. The selection of Kharge as party president may re-open North-South fault lines. I am scared of that. Although Tharoor also belongs to the South, he has an international and cosmopolitan stature. He is intellectual and has worked with the UN before joining the party. One more thing: Tharoor has consecutively won the last three elections to Parliament. On that score, he is one step ahead of Kharge.
In contemporary politics, elections are the final and decisive indicator of anything. We have a party in power that is sort of an election machine. It has changed the entire political scenario. Tharoor thus would be a much more charismatic option as Congress president.
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But then we also see that this corrupt political environment is witness to the heinous kind of violence just for the sake of electoral victory. In Panchayat level or block level, we have seen a candidate killing his brother or father. Now, juxtapose this scenario with a man who is walking on roads to unite this country and protect our constitutional values! I am talking of Rahul Gandhi, a man, and a living saint, who is completely aware but undeterred by the political processes in his party or elsewhere.
Rahul Gandhi is a man upon whom I rest my full faith. When Bharat Jodo Yatra will end after 150 days, the political environment in this country will have completely changed. Mark the words of RSS leaders Hosabale and Mohan Bhagwat, and what they have spoken on Vijayadashmi. This shows that some sort of churning is going on inside Sangh and BJP. Mark the moves of Nitin Gadkari too.
The question of Congress president is irrelevant in the face of what is going to happen in this country. Be it Kharge or Tharoor or anyone else, he will eventually act as a dummy because Rahul Gandhi is going to outweigh anyone in Indian politics. But yes, just a rider in case — one can fight external enemies but surrender in front of the near and dear ones. We have seen how the Congress party got doomed in Punjab and how it nearly averted a crisis in Rajasthan just because of the overreaching interference. And now in the UPCC.
So, 2024 is going to be big. Rahul Gandhi is eventually going to emerge as a national leader. He is the face of the Congress party and will remain so in the coming years. A petty question like a party President’s post never matters for him because if Congress wins he is not going to accept any post. And that is why we respect him, just him, from the core of our hearts. This is the reason why I find this question of choice between Kharge and Tharoor insignificant.
(The narrator is also general secretary and media panelist of UPCC)
As told to Abhishek Srivastava
