The Congress is outfoxed by friends and foes, again | Mumbai news - Hindustan Times
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The Congress is outfoxed by friends and foes, again

By, Mumbai
Mar 20, 2019 12:55 AM IST

Some years ago, in Goa, however, the Congress had set a policy that not more than one member of any family would contest the same election that year

As the season of Aaya Rams and Gaya Rams begins, I cannot help but be amused by how the Congress always manages to get manipulated by the wily foxes in its midst.

I also wonder whether the party has a steadfast policy about giving multiple tickets to members of one family at one election. Both Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi are contesting the Lok Sabha polls from Uttar Pradesh. I suppose it was modesty that stopped Priyanka Gandhi Vadra from doing so this year — till at least one of them can step back to make way for the other. Like NCP president Sharad Pawar seems to be doing for his family members.

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Some years ago, in Goa, however, the Congress had set a policy that not more than one member of any family would contest the same election that year, particularly if one of them was already holding high office. That led to the denial of a party ticket to Vishwajeet Rane, the son of the then sitting CM Pratapsingh Rane. Vishwajit contested the election anyway as a rebel. His father, then, for either his refusal or inability to stop him, was demoted from the office of chief minister to that of Speaker of the Assembly. That accommodation was facilitated by the fact that Rane’s son won his own seat and brought at least two other MLAs to the Congress fold. Since then his father has retired and Vishwajit has joined the BJP (he became a minister in the Manohar Parrikar cabinet by breaking with the Congress in 2017) and was hoping to become chief minister of Goa by raiding the Congress again.

I see somewhat the same thing repeating in Maharashtra with the Vikhe Patils. I recall then CM Vilasrao Deshmukh getting worried about his own son’s future after looking at the Rane example in Goa. But Deshmukh was a loyal soldier of the Congress and would never have run his son as a rebel in the Assembly elections while he was chief minister. Things sorted themselves out when he had to resign as CM after the 26/11 attacks and he did not have to make any difficult choice as the Ranes had. But the Vikhe Patils are different. Their problem is not so much with the Congress as with Sharad Pawar. And despite being a committed Congress family since the times of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, they have had few qualms about travelling back and forth between the Congress and other ideologically opposite political parties to safeguard their own political and commercial interests.

When Pawar was reigning supreme in the Congress in the 1980s, Balasaheb Vikhe Patil, in a headlong clash with the Maratha strongman, had no choice but to quit the Congress and join the Shiv Sena. He even became a minister in the Vajpayee cabinet at the Centre and brought to the government a lot of value addition as one of the titans of sugar co-operatives in Maharashtra – one of the core reasons for the rivalry between the Pawars and Vikhe Patils.

Then Pawar split the Congress in 1999 and Balasaheb made a homecoming to the Congress, the natural party for someone with his family background. His father, Vithalrao Vikhe Patil, had made a great impression on Nehru in the 1950s by setting up the first successful sugar co-operative at Pravaranagar in Ahmednagar and made the co-operatives the backbone of the Congress in the state.

But Pawar’s dominating grip on the Congress where all state leaders are now deferring to him and depending on him to sail through the coming election, has made life difficult for the Vikhe Patils again. The NCP has taken the Ahmednagar seat coveted by the Vikhe Patils. And after the passing of Balasaheb, the father of Radhakrishna, Pawar has, for the first time, the family where he always wanted them – subservient and deferring to him. So long as Balasaheb was alive, Pawar always found it difficult to make inroads in Ahmednagar, whether with the Congress or the NCP. Now with the son of Radhakrishna, who is leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, wanting to contest the Lok Sabha seat, Sujay Vikhe Patil would have had to contest on an NCP ticket or not at all.

So he now joins the BJP to deny Pawar the satisfaction of having the upper hand. His father is no Pratapsingh Rane and unlikely to be looked upon as benignly by the party high command. He has resigned to his party president (and not the assembly Speaker), both acts somewhat meaningless with barely six months to go to Assembly polls. However, with the expected rebellion in the BJP over the Ahmednagar seat, it is not likely to be a cakewalk for either the BJP or the NCP there. But all of them have outfoxed the Congress.

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  • ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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    I wonder if the Sena and the AIMIM know that Bal Thackeray was the first person ever in India to lose his voting rights and that to contest elections for hate speeches he had made during a 1987 byelection to Vile Parle.

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