Tag: Congress Sonia Gandhi

Delhi Riots: Congress Urges President to Follow ‘Raj Dharm’, Sack Amit Shah

The party also accused the Centre of being a “mute spectator” to violence in the city and held the Aam Aadmi Party “equally responsible” for the situation.

New Delhi: A delegation of Congress leaders, led by interim president Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, on Thursday met President Ram Nath Kovind at the Rashtrapati Bhawan and urged him to remove Amit Shah as the Union home minister for ‘failing to prevent the violence’ that has gripped the national capital since Sunday. In a subtle reference to former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s rebuke to Narendra Modi for failing to fulfil his ‘raj dharm’ after the 2002 Gujarat riots, Congress leaders urged the President now to fulfil his ‘raj dharm’ while dealing with the situation.

Centre ‘mute spectator’ to violence

Following the meeting, Gandhi read out from the memorandum. It accused the Centre of remaining a “mute spectator” as violence in the city unfolded and left at least 34 people dead and several injured. Accusing Shah of abdicating his responsibility as home minister, the party urged the president to immediately call for his removal.

“We call upon you (President) to ensure that life, liberty and property of citizens are preserved. We also reiterate that you should immediately call for the removal of the home minister for his inability to contain violence,” Gandhi said. She also added that the president had assured the delegation that its demands would be looked into.

Also read: ‘Centre, State Govt Responsible, Amit Shah Should Resign,’ Says Sonia Gandhi on Delhi Riots

‘Total failure of Centre’

Manmohan Singh said the party informed the president that the violence reflected a “total failure” of the Centre to deal with the situation. “We called upon the president to suggest to him that what has happened in the last four days in Delhi is a matter of great concern and a matter of national shame in which at least 34 people have died and 200 people are injured, it is a reflection of the total failure of the central government,” he said.

Former prime minister Manmohan Singh addresses the media after the Congress delegation met President Ram Nath Kovind on Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020. Photo: PTI/Subhav Shukla

Yesterday as well, Sonia Gandhi had blamed Shah for the violence in the city and sought his resignation. She claimed that there was a “history, design and pattern” behind the violence in Delhi, which many have equated to the 2002 Gujarat pogrom and also the 1984 anti-Sikh violence.

The Congress has also accused the Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi, which dislodged it in the city following the 2013 assembly elections, for being “equally responsible” for the situation.

‘Collective failure of Centre, Kejriwal government’

While accusing several BJP leader of making “inflammatory statements intended to create an atmosphere of fear and hate,” Sonia Gandhi had also blamed the Arvind Kejriwal government and the Centre for their “collective failure” to prevent violence. She insisted that the chief minister had an obligation to be visible in the affected areas and in constant communication with the people.

Also read: ‘Consensus in Congress Is Sonia Stay President for Foreseeable Future’: Manish Tewari

The Congress Working Committee had also issued a resolution on Wednesday which stated that “the CWC is of the firm opinion that what has happened in Delhi is a colossal failure of duty for which the entire responsibility must be borne by the Central government, particularly the Home Minister, and calls upon the Home Minister to tender his resignation immediately.”

Congress to reaches out to victims

Meanwhile, in keeping with Sonia Gandhi’s call to all her party leaders to reach out to victims of violence and their families in the affected areas, the Delhi Congress has started urging its leaders in East Delhi and North East Delhi to make all efforts to normalise the situation.

Speaking to The Wire, its spokesperson Mukesh Sharma said all former and present councillors, office bearers, legislators and other leaders of the party from the two districts had either started or would start visiting affected people and provide them with essential help. “We will assess their losses and see how best we can assist them. Our fear is that the loss of life and property from the violence is much more than what has come out so far,” he said.

‘Centre, State Govt Responsible, Amit Shah Should Resign,’ Says Sonia Gandhi on Delhi Riots

Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said BJP leader Kapil Mishra had said was ‘shameful’ and the government’s silence on it was even ‘more shameful’.

New Delhi: Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday said the Centre and the Delhi government were responsible for the deadly communal violence in the national capital and demanded that Home Minister Amit Shah should resign taking responsibility for it.

Addressing a press conference after chairing a Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting, she said there was a conspiracy behind the violence and tragic incidents in Delhi.

“The conspiracy was witnessed during Delhi polls and BJP leaders gave hate speeches creating an atmosphere of fear and hatred,” she said.

Also read: ‘Appalled’ by Delhi Police’s State of Affairs, HC Plays Clip of Kapil Mishra’s Speech

“The Centre, home minister, and the Delhi government are responsible for the situation in the national capital. Union Home Minister Shah must take responsibility for the violence in Delhi and resign,” she added.

Gandhi said that the Delhi government and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal have also failed to maintain peace. The Congress president also hit out at BJP leader Kapil Mishra for making a statement that allegedly incited violence in the city.

“The CWC has passed a resolution on the situation in the city,” she said, adding that the CWC believes that the situation is grave and urgent action is required.

Also read: Delhi Riots: With 21 Killed, Narendra Modi Finally Breaks His Silence

Adequate security forces must be deployed to bring the situation under control and peace committees must be formed in mohallas, Gandhi said while reading out the CWC resolution on the violence in Delhi.

“The Delhi chief minister must be visible in the affected areas and stay in constant communication with the people,” she said.

While quoting the resolution, Gandhi said that the CWC urges people to reject politics of hate and do their best to heal rifts.

Meanwhile, the Congress also postponed its march to Rashtrapati Bhavan till Thursday in view of President Ram Nath Kovind’s unavailability, Congress’ chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala informed.

Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Wednesday said what BJP leader Kapil Mishra had said was “shameful” but the government’s silence on it was even “more shameful”.

A Year After Winning Three States, Congress Has Quit Politicking

Rahul Gandhi was credited as the architect of the success – he chose the chief ministers – and has now withdrawn himself, throwing the party’s cadre into disarray.

There are several people who believe Sonia Gandhi’s softer stand on the Shiv Sena – as opposed to Rahul’s rigidity – is the need of the hour for the Congress. What lies forgotten is that it was Rahul’s policies that brought a clear victory in three large states in 2018 and actually revived the sunken Congress.

His grave miscalculation in the general elections that followed and his dependence on operators like Prashant Kishore and Praveen Chakraborty undid all that good work. If his plans are not carried through the Congress may, in fact, end up losing all three states in the future.

The process of reconstruction of the inner party infrastructure had started with Gujarat and, slowly, the old guard had been weeded out. New faces and new methods of candidate selection had been ushered and in its initial burst yielded the desired results, clubbed with the anti-incumbency which was working against the BJP in these central Indian states.

Rahul relied on his team, his digital feedback and his own instincts and took instant decisions. He chose to ignore the claims of Sachin Pilot and relied on Ashok Gehlot, who had impressed him in Gujarat with his patient planning and ability to talk to and dissuade rebels. In hindsight, it has worked well in Rajasthan.

In Madhya Pradesh, he let the old guard of Digvijay Singh and Kamal Nath have their way, primarily because the results were two short of a majority and his instinct told him that the other claimant, Jyotiraditya Scindia, would not be able to take everyone along or could falter in the face of a Modi-Shah onslaught.

In Chhattisgarh, he came up with a formula of 2.5 years each for T.S. Singhdeo and Bhupesh Baghel who had worked in tandem during electioneering against the Raman Singh regime. His original choice of veteran leader Tamradhwaj Sahu was unacceptable to almost all regional leaders a year ago, but now there are many who believe he would have worked better.

Also read: With Rahul’s Resignation, Will Congress Finally Extricate Itself From the Gandhis?

Nevertheless, his sudden resignation and the drama of Sonia’s return has ensured that these states, which were supposed to work according to a “Rahul Plan” post elections, are suddenly rudderless. Corruption allegations are back and so are the old-timers. A well-won victory is being squandered for lack of direction.

All three states, for instance, were committed to waiving farm loans. Chhattisgarh did it entirely and within the time limit specified by Rahul. Kamal Nath is still struggling with the issue as initially loans up to Rs 2 lakh were waived but there have been complaints regarding that as well. There have been similar issues in Rajasthan. With Rahul no longer taking a direct call, things have slipped further.

Rahul Gandhi with MP Congress leaders Kamal Nath and Jyotiraditya Scindia during a public meeting at Ujjain’s Dussehra Maidan. Photo: PTI

Bhupesh Baghel has been promoting his own Narwa Ghurwa back to the basics scheme without much visible success. There has been no central monitoring of his scheme by anyone from Delhi and he does not have any reasonably qualified local people on his team to understand or advise on the utility or futility of his plans. Baghel also increasingly tends to lose track of governance in his pursuit of cases against the Raman Singh regime. Several cases have also piled up in the high court and the Supreme Court with no end in sight to the bickering.

Every senior Congress leader from Madhya Pradesh has been complaining that the general secretary in charge of the state Bavaria has not been responsive to their political needs. In the absence of Rahul, the general secretaries have appropriated, for themselves, responsibilities which normally a strong Congress high command does not easily allow.

Deepak Bavaria, for instance, has so far not cleared any list for appointments to any of the boards and corporations in the state. The second line of leadership is now restless as, even after a year of return to power after a 15-year long wait, they have not been accommodated. P.L. Puniya is doing the same in Chhattisgarh. Politically, the situation is decaying as appointments to even local college boards have not yet cleared by Delhi because the general secretaries are either ignoring them or are themselves being ignored by the Ahmed Patel-led dispensation at 10 Janpath.

Also read: The Bogus Nature of Congress’ Farm Loan Waiver Promises

While Rahul delivered the states through some detailed election planning, he is no longer taking any interest in the implementation of manifesto promises. Baghel has been campaigning hard for his paddy procurement price of Rs 2,500 per quintal – something that was the core of Congress campaign in 2018 – without much success because the AICC is not taking the issue up at all and neither is the Congress parliamentary party in the absence of Rahul’s voice.

Rahul had personally made promises to several leaders in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh that they would be taken care of or would be accommodated elsewhere when they could not be given tickets or had lost by a margin. Now no one is sure who will deliver on that promise.

Amit Shah, who is bitter from the BJP’s loss in the Maharashtra fiasco, would find the perfect salve for his wounds if he manages to snatch any of these states from right under the Sonia Gandhi’s nose. Rahul, who has taken to campaigning in Jharkhand, will quickly have to take to running and advising the states that he had won only last year.

Sonia Gandhi Elected Leader of Congress Parliamentary Party

The meeting was attended by the party’s 52 newly-elected Lok Sabha MPs and Rajya Sabha members, besides members of the Congress Working Committee and other senior leaders.

New Delhi: Sonia Gandhi was once again elected leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) at a meeting of party MPs at the Central Hall of Parliament on Saturday.

The meeting was attended by the party’s 52 newly-elected Lok Sabha MPs and Rajya Sabha members, besides members of the Congress Working Committee and other senior leaders.

Gandhi, who represents Uttar Pradesh’s Rae Bareli in Lok Sabha, is the chairperson of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA). Sources said the Congress Parliamentary Party authorised Gandhi to pick the party’s leader in Lok Sabha. She has convened a meeting of senior leaders in the afternoon to decide on the matter.

Gandhi’s name was proposed by former prime minister Manmohan Singh and seconded by Jharkhand MP Jothimani S. and Kerala MP K. Sudhakaran.

Gandhi, in her speech, lauded the role of Congress president Rahul Gandhi during the Lok Sabha polls. Rahul led the “party from the front with dynamism”, she said, adding that the party with its 52 MPs in Lok Sabha will play the role of the opposition sincerely and raise people’s issues.

This was the first official meeting that Congress president Rahul Gandhi attended after the May 25 meeting of the party’s working committee, where he had offered to quit as Congress chief.

The CWC has already rejected his offer to resign and unanimously passed a resolution authorising him to bring structural changes in the party at all levels in a bid to revamp it.

Why Don’t We Hold Our Leaders to a Higher Standard of Morality?

There is a lack of moral indignation in India. We are triggered if political leaders fake their education degrees or display ignorance in matters of technology, but condone their participation in some of the worst massacres in modern India.

A teacher once gave me a good piece of advice: If you want to criticise something effectively, use a razor blade, not a butter knife.

As the general elections were drawing to a close, netizens suddenly rolled up their sleeves to criticise the BJP and Narendra Modi for a string of issues. From serious ones – such as the Election Commission’s suspicious concessions for the ruling government – to quibbles about the kind of questions the PM was asked in his seemingly scripted interviews.

Criticism limited to the ex-post performance of elected leaders is pointless if it does not question the moral legitimacy of their candidature: first and foremost, on what ethical grounds is a candidate eligible to contest an election?

Narendra Modi’s career as a politician should have been cut short way back in 2002 when he failed to take accountability for any security lapses in Godhra leading to the death of 59 Hindu karsevaks as well as the orchestrated attacks on thousands of Muslims later in the state.

Critiquing the Election Commission for lapses in its autonomy is irrelevant if we, as a society, turn a blind eye to significantly worse moral and legal violations from our chosen leadership. In fact, we might have done well to have learnt our lesson much earlier, in 1984 itself. The Congress and its leaders ought to have been rejected, on the basis of moral accountability, for failing to protect their Sikh citizens. But that was not the case.

Also read: The Right Wing and the Myth of Selective Outrage

No politician in India has ever stepped down over the killings of its citizens, in targeted mass violence, on his or her own volition. If L.K. Advani had offered to resign, it was in the Jain Hawala case and not when the Liberhan Commission Report indicted him for complicity in the Babri Mosque demolition that triggered Hindu-Muslim violence across the country. If Sonia Gandhi offered to resign, it was over the office of profit controversy in 2006, and not her party’s alleged collusion in the murder of 3,000 Sikhs in Delhi in 1984.

Human lives as means to an end

The 19th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant held it to be morally wrong for human beings to be treated merely as the means rather than an end in themselves. Political leadership in India has almost always functioned as the antithesis of Kantian ethics. But more worrying is the instrumentality that we, the voters, adopt in our evaluation of candidates for the electoral process.

Did he or would he provide jobs? Did she or would she build roads? Agreed, in a patronage democracy like India’s these are critical concerns for one’s daily survival. However, the idea of fairness, and giving equal respect to every individual, is much more crucial to the democratic process.

As voters we criticise parties and demand moral responsibility only when we are short-changed in the provision of material goods but choose not to question their moral legitimacy when they normalise violence against fellow citizens. If politicians do not resign over the killings of people it is also because there is little outrage among fellow citizens over deliberate murders than there is over corruption and accidents.

Narendra Modi, A.B. Vajpayee and L.K. Advani. Credit: PTI/Files

Narendra Modi, A.B. Vajpayee and L.K. Advani. Credit: PTI/Files

It is well known that in the middle of mass violence in Gujarat in 2002, the former prime minister A.B. Vajpayee had reminded Modi of his raj dharma or the moral accountability of a leader. Once Advani threatened to resign, Vajpayee withheld his decision to sack Modi.

Also read: ‘Blame It on the Mob’ – How Governments Shun the Responsibility of Judicial Redress

Sure, Vajpayee did not follow up on what was his own raj dharma, but neither did the voters of India. The absence of moral outrage among citizens for allowing an elected politician to continue in office despite presiding over some of the worst massacres in modern India – and continuing to accept his candidature in subsequent elections – is extremely disturbing.

Selective outrage

If we see it morally fit to let elected leaders, who shrug off mass killings and selective violence against specific groups of people as uncontainable one-off episodes and to continue participating in the democratic process, it is worth asking what the threshold of our moral indignation is.

Alas, it seems that the threshold is very high in matters of intrinsic value. We are triggered if political leaders fake their education degrees or display ignorance in technological matters, but condone them when they utilise human life as an instrument to advance their political careers.

It is common knowledge that mass violence (or “riots”) in India are implicitly orchestrated by politicians for electoral gain. Yet, victims of violence have no option but to settle for an apology from the said politicians, as the Sikhs did with the Congress. Or to settle with nothing at all, as did many victims of violence in Gujarat and Nellie and Muzaffarnagar and, indeed, of the cow protection vigilantes.

Also read: In the Republic of Lynchings, There Is No Us and Them

If at all there is a debate in civil society, it is relegated to arguing about which political party is responsible for a greater quantum of killings. In the endless whataboutery, moral accountability as a criterion for candidature is completely ignored. If ruling politicians are credited for all the good things that happen under their regime, why not discredit them for the bad?

Raheel Dhattiwala is a sociologist trained at Oxford University and author of Keeping the Peace: Spatial Differences in Hindu-Muslim Violence in Gujarat in 2002 (Cambridge University Press).