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constituency in Madhya Pradesh. He was a Minister of State with the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi may be technically
with independent charge for Power in the cabinet of prime justified under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution. They con-
minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh from October 2012 until May stitute the requisite two-thirds of the 18-member Congress Leg-
2014. A member of the Rahul brigade, the Scindia scion has xhis islature Party. But this orchestrated decimation of the Opposition
master’s ears. He doesn’t have too much political weight so would in the 120-member legislature does not bode well.
be a comfortable fit for the Gandhi-Nehru family. With this, the TRS’s strength has gone up to 103. It
However, a disastrous Lok Sabha election has pulled down had won 88 seats in the 2018 elections, but three MLAs
his stocks. Not only did Congress fare poorly in Uttar Pradesh — an Independent and one each from the Telugu
-- Scindia was in charge of western UP — he lost his fam- Desam Party and the All India Forward Bloc —
ily borough of Guna. Worse is that Madhya Pradesh Congress defected to its fold recently. These actions seem aimed to re-
is a cesspool of factionalism. Kamal Nath, Digvijaya Singh and duce the Opposition’s ability to act as a check. It is not only the ill
Jyotiraditya Scindia all vie for power. Anyone of them moving omens that bade badly for Congress, but the much-touted maha-
closer to the high command would set alarm bells in rivals’ camps. gathbandhan is also crumbling. The Opposition appears to be in
There is also a clamour in the state unit to replace Kamal Nath meltdown mode following the BJP’s sweeping victory in the Lok
as Pradesh Congress Committee president with Scindia. With Sabha election. The Bahujan Samaj Party supremo, Mayawati has
Congress hanging to power by the skin of its teeth in Madhya announced that her party’s alliance with the Samajwadi party stands
Pradesh, any tweaking of local power equations can have severe terminated for now and that it would contest the coming by-polls in 11
repercussions. Assembly constituencies in Uttar Pradesh on its own.
The SP and the BSP were rival poles in U.P. politics
pRiyanka gandhi VadRa until the 2017 Assembly elections when the BJP
Priyanka Gandhi is currently serving as general wrested power with an impressive majority.
secretary of the All India Congress Committee in charge of eastern Mayawati and the Yadav family at the helm of the
Uttar Pradesh. By far the perfect choice for Gandhi-Nehru family. SP had a long history of mutual animosity, which
Having spent nearly all their political life under a dynastic rule, also mirrored the tense relations between Dalits and
Congress leaders would welcome the status quo of another Gan- Other Backward Classes, their respective social bases.
dhi as their leader. With their very existence under threat from the BJP’s ability to ag-
Priyanka Gandhi has a lot going for her. She is young, has an easy gregate a host of populist issues around the Hindutva theme and woo
charm and connects with the workers. The best part is power stays Dalit and OBC caste groups, the BSP and the SP buried the hatchet to
with the family. form an alliance, which included the Rashtriya Lok Dal, ahead of the
But will she? Till the recent Lok Sabha elec- Lok Sabha election.
tions, she was seen to be a reluctant politician, prefer- The alliance appeared to be doing well with victories in three key
ring only to the canvas in mother Sonia and brother by-elections, but the general election results came as a rude surprise
Rahul’s constituencies. Would she be willing to for them. They won only 15 of U.P.’s 80 seats, while the BJP took 62.
become a full-time politician? The other hurdle is the economic The Congress won only one seat from Rae Bareilly contested by
offence cases against her husband Robert Vadra. It’ll be a humon- Sonia Gandhi while it lost Amethi from where Rahul Gandhi himself
gous albatross to carry. If she is appointed expect the BJP to push contested.
various agencies to up their probes into Vadra’s deals. Would The vote share of the alliance was significantly lower than the
Priyanka Gandhi be able to juggle all these responsibilities? combined strength of the individual parties in 2014. As such the deci-
Already Rahul Gandhi has hinted that nobody should suggest that sion and its announcement by Mayawati should not have come as
Priyanka should take up the reigns. such a surprise. Mayawati pointed out that Yadavs, the core base of
the SP, did not really behind it this time. She made it clear that while
the ill omens BSP vote was transferable, the SP was not able to transfer its vote to
In the meanwhile, there are ill omens for Congress. Telangana As- BSP where it contested. Similar was the case with Jats, the RLD’s core
sembly Speaker Pocharam Srinivas Reddy’s decision to endorse base.
the merger of a 12-member group of legislators from the Congress

tehelka / 30 june 2019 18 www.tehelka.com