By Sushil Kutty
Reinstated Lok Sabha MP Rahul Gandhi told BJP MPs on August 9 not to be afraid of his “return”. ‘Aapko Darna Nahi Hai’, he echoed former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan who is now behind bars. Rahul Gandhi’s conviction in the Modi surname defamation case was stayed by the Supreme Court. With that Rahul Gandhi was set to give the treasury benches Hell participating in the non -confidence motion.
But on the first day of his return to the Lok Sabha, Gandhi sat still like the ‘tapaswi’ he had compared himself to during the winding few days of the 2022 ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’. That south-north march of 3,750 km rattled the BJP leadership. The Congress party’s emphatic victory in Karnataka assembly elections was for the large part due to Rahul Gandhi’s ‘BJY’.
And now, to add to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s scare, Gandhi is all set for the Gujarat-Meghalaya west-to-east Bharat Jodo Yatra. Manipur isn’t in this leg of Rahul’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, but Rahul Gandhi has already covered Manipur when it was burning and on August 9, the ‘Gandhi’ wondered why Prime Minister Narendra Modi cannot muster enough courage to visit Manipur.
Rahul Gandhi compared in his first Lok Sabha speech after being reinstated as a member, Prime Minister Narendra Modi with ‘Ravana’ and said the Prime Minister listened only to “Adani and Union Home Minister Amit Shah”. Rahul Gandhi’s strategy seems to be to keep Modi in the crosshairs while insisting that he’ll play by the rules henceforth; now that he’s a “good boy” following his conviction and near incarceration.
Good guy Rahul Gandhi is all silent and watch and wait approach; the disciplined gentleman though sufficiently fiery to make his intent clear, which is that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will not be given any quarter whatsoever, come hell or high water. “You are putting the entire country in flames. First it was Manipur, now it is Haryana. You want to burn the whole country,” the Gandhi scion attacked Modi on Wednesday in the Lok Sabha.
This, after Earth Sciences Minister Kiran Rijiju asked Rahul Gandhi to apologise for the mess in Manipur and the BJP MPs raised slogans. “The Congress party is responsible for the militancy in the northeast. They killed northeast,” the courageous former Union Law Minister said, his ouster from that honourable ministry still fresh in the mind.
Rahul Gandhi didn’t seem to mind Rijiju’s castigation. Instead Gandhi spoke of his Manipur visit and his meetings with Manipuri women and Manipuri children at the relief camps. “I asked a woman ‘what happened to you” – “my only son was shot in front of my eyes. I cried all night and laid down with his corpse”, the woman told Rahul Gandhi and Gandhi wondered why PM Modi wasn’t going to Manipur?
In the fiercest attack yet on Modi and the Modi government, Rahul Gandhi charged Modi with “murdering India in Manipur” – “the truth is Manipur has been divided into two parts. Manipur does not exist anymore,” Rahul Gandhi said, juggling with words and making a jumble of them. Asked about Congress-ruled Rajasthan, he said, “I am going today.”
Should that worry Prime Minister Narendra Modi? Is the BJP worried Rahul Gandhi in his new avatar is making Modi look like a regional satrap – faded and jaded? Is Gandhi stealing the thunder and the lightning from Modi? Is the BJP scared of the Congress making the most of Rahul Gandhi’s comeback? Is that why Rahul Gandhi’s taunt “Aapko Darna Nahi”?
The BJP certainly could do with some political ‘chawanprash’; Modi’s charisma is losing its glow. Stop calling Narendra Modi names and half his invincibility is lost. The hits that Rahul Gandhi took because of the Modi surname defamation case actually helped Rahul Gandhi politically and personally. The Congress leader found that Modi can be beaten by refusing to call Prime Minister Narendra Modi names! There are other Modis who are thieves and charlatans, this one is in a league of his own!
Simply put, the tables have been turned and though the ‘no-confidence motion’ will sink, the perception that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is fast losing his invincibility, like a Cobra its skin, is gaining currency with every twist of the political knife in the BJP’s guts. The no-confidence motion will not tell the full story, it never does! But Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s days of woes have begun. .(IPA Service)
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