Amit Kushari
In the recent past quite a few incidents happened which have significantly lowered the prestige of the biggest opposition party of India, the Indian National Congress. India’s freedom movement was fought under the banner of this 150 year old national party of India and this party has given India many illustrious leaders who laid down their lives for the country. Great Prime Ministers of India like Pandit Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Narsimha Rao, belonged to this great party and India can never forget their sacrifices and contributions. Even Manmohan Singh’s contribution in the period 2004 to 2009 will be remembered in history. The downfall of the Congress started in 2009 and its reputation gradually got sullied with scams unfolding one by one. Even earlier the image of the Congress suffered somewhat when Congress tried to put up all sorts of road blocks for stalling the installation of the first BJP led NDA Govt. in 1996/97 by propping up unknown faces like Deve Gowda and I K Gujral to stop Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
India will never forget Indira Gandhi who laid down her life for the sake of India. Although she had dictatorial tendencies and made a grave mistake by imposing emergency, India knows that she was the bravest PM we ever had. She had the courage to cut Pakistan into two, give birth to independent Bangladesh , and annex Sikkim with India. She created not only history but geography also by changing political maps of Asia. In 1971 the leader of the opposition, Vajpayee hailed Mrs Gandhi as today’s goddess Durga who triumphed over evil.
Indira Gandhi’s daughter in law and grandson are now President and vice President of the party and the party is losing its glamour and prestige with every passing day. Not only has its tally in Lok Sabha touched a record low of 44, its day to day activities and utterances of leaders are making the grand old party of India look like an anti national organisation. In their eagerness to malign the present PM, Narendra Modi, Congress leaders are being seen siding with anti national elements and terrorists. When anti national slogans were being raised in JNU, Delhi, Indira Gandhi’s grandson was found sympathising with the anti national elements. In the Batla house encounter case also we saw Congress leaders siding with anti national terrorists. People of India will never forgive and forget these shameful incidents. The revelations made by the infamous Pak terrorist, Dawood Gilani (alias David Headley) to NIA and to the CBI court , as well as the revelations made by G K Pillai, ex Home Secretary, who worked under the Congress govt have painted the Congress in a totally black colour. Now it seems Congress govt was trying to shield a woman Lashkar-e- Toiba activist, Ishrat Jehan, just to settle scores with Narendra Modi, Gujarat CM who was aspiring to become PM by challenging the all powerful Congress Govt. We are astonished to know that the then Home Minister filed a second affidavit in this case before the Supreme Court to mislead the court, and that he himself dictated the affidavit keeping the Home Secretary in the dark. In other words the Congress Home Minister was trying to cover up the activities of a Lashkar terrorist just to defame an Indian CM. Indira Gandhi would have been miserable if she had been alive to see this black day of the Congress and the activities of her progeny. She is lucky to be dead.
BJP came to power in 2014 crushing the corrupt Congress which was neck deep in scams. People had a lot of expectations from the BJP. People of India almost worshipped Narendra Modi as their saviour who had rescued them from the clutches of a corrupt party. However, within a year all their expectations have fallen flat on the ground. People have realised that Modi’s govt. cannot fulfil all the tall promises made earlier. Unpaid loans taken by the very rich are being written off in the public sector banks and incentives are being given for declaration of black money. The poor, the middle class and the salaried classes are thoroughly disappointed with this govt because NDA is touching their pockets in the name of economic development of India. These are the people who had voted for the NDA in large numbers. They feel totally cheated and will never vote for the NDA again. This govt. is also trying to tax the Provident fund of the employees! This is incredible! The NDA is cutting off its own legs due to lack of foresight. They are merrily filling up the treasury with the hard earned money of the citizens. Don’t they realise that the keys of this treasury will not remain with them after 2018, however scam free they may remain and however high might be their fiscal achievements. A five percent swing against them will knock them out of their chairs and they are destined to lose power in 2019 unless they immediately change their priorities. The salaried middle class and their family members constitute 6 to 7% of the electorate but being educated and influential they are in a position to swing 10 to 12 % of the votes. I have spoken to many middle class voters. I notice that many of them were BJP voters but in future they plan to never vote for BJP again. People in power need to keep this in mind.
The voters are today really between the devil and the deep sea. They would not like to vote for either the Congress or the BJP. Voters in non Hindi states will not face much of a problem because most of these states have strong regional parties. They can easily avoid both Congress and BJP. In the Hindi speaking areas, Bihar, UP, Delhi donot have any significant problem because strong regional parties are in place. Very soon Punjab will also get a strong regional party. The voters of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Jammu, Himachal, Goa, Jharkhand will face a peculiar dilemma because they don’t have any regional party. They are truly placed between the devil and the deep sea and wouldn’t know who to vote for.
(The author is former Financial Commissioner J&K) Feedback to the author at 09748635185 or amitkus@hotmail.com)
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