Chairman of the party's media committee, Janardan Dwivedi is considered a person closely associated with the ruling family. Ratnakar Pandey, former MP from Varanasi, taught Sonia Gandhi Hindi in the 1980s and early 1990s; Dwivedi replaced him, and is now, among other things, in charge of vetting Gandhi's Hindi speeches. So when he told reporters on the record last week that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra was deeply interested in politics, speculation naturally started that the Congress was exploring a bigger role for Priyanka. Combine that with Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi's lacklustre electoral performance and Dwivedi's remarks made perfect sense.
And he added, choosing to be coy and mysterious: that her father Rajiv had told him [Dwivedi] other things about the children that he [Dwivedi] would reveal only later. It was almost as if Dwivedi was hinting he knew things about the family to which even Sonia was not privy. Derisively, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said this proved the Congress was what they had always said it was: a regency where if a prince failed, he would be sure to be replaced by a princess to be followed by her two children, should the dynasty ever be challenged. This, when Rahul Gandhi has been screaming that he wants to put in processes that will democratise the party. At one stroke, Dwivedi reduced the level of the election debate to a succession plan in a family-run establishment. Incandescent with rage, insiders in the party could only watch. M L Fotedar, another family retainer of the Indira Gandhi-era, who has no access to Rahul, told Sonia a few weeks ago that Indira had told him she considered Priyanka more political than Rahul. So whom should we believe? Dwivedi? Or Fotedar? It is enough to make you want to be sick.
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Then came a statement by Defence Minister A K Antony, the man Rahul considers his teacher and role model: that the Left parties should consider joining up with the Congress to defeat Narendra Modi. The invitation was unmistakable. But the fact is, it is the Left parties the Congress is fighting in Kerala. It is one thing to discuss this in private. But in the middle of the campaign, when the Congress and the Left parties are slugging it out, to say: "let's be friends…" Does it make any sense at all? Antony's statement got an immediate rebuttal from the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which obviously does not want its cadres to be demoralised. Did the Congress really expect any other reaction?
The party believes the rising spectre of the BJP in West Bengal as well as Odisha will propel the two important satraps - Mamata Banerjee and Naveen Patnaik - into the Congress' arms. But some Congressman only has to say this and it will immediately put both Banerjee and Patnaik's backs up.
That the Congress is a sinking ship was proved even more emphatically when after securing nomination for the Gautambudhnagar seat, Congress candidate Ramesh Chandra Tomar re-joined the BJP. Another candidate from Bhind, Bhagirath Prasad, a retired IAS officer, also joined the BJP after getting a Congress ticket. And if all this was not enough, a senior United Progressive Alliance ally, Sharad Pawar, said quite decisively that the Congress would be the second-largest party in the next Lok Sabha.
This column asked a senior Congressman where he thought the Congress would get its biggest haul of seats. Initially he demurred, but when pressed, blurted out "Assam", followed by "Kerala". This tells its own story. Assam sends 14 seats to the Lok Sabha and Kerala sends 20, so if the party thinks it is getting the biggest complement of seats from these two states then that's just 34, not even 10 per cent of the 545-member house.
It's not as if the BJP has not shot itself in the foot. What it did to Jaswant Singh was inexcusable and people are still talking about the way the BJP treats veterans in the party who have the courage to speak their mind. But in this election, the medal for accurate aiming and shooting must go to the Congress. It has honed it to a fine art.