Opinion | Congress, Wayanad And Rahul: Flags of Discontent

Three days after 27 constituents of the INDIA bloc congregated at Delhi's Ramlila Maidan to protest against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, the leaders of both parties held parallel road shows at the picturesque Kalpetta, the district headquarters of Wayanad, and filed nominations opposing each other in the Lok Sabha poll.

Fissures and fissures within fissures mar the INDIA bloc. In West Bengal, the Trinamool Congress has opted to go solo, without the Congress and the Left parties. And in turn, the Congress and the Left, which are united in Bengal and presumably elsewhere too, stand apart in Kerala, as part of different coalitions. 

Complex Equations

Reacting to Rahul Gandhi's candidature in Wayanad, Communist Party of India (CPI) general secretary D. Raja, whose wife Annie Raja - also president of the National Federation of Indian Women - is fighting the Gandhi scion, wondered why Rahul, whose Yatras and campaigns were aimed at combating the BJP, chose not to contest a seat where the party would have been his main challenger.

The BJP's Kerala state chief, K. Surendran, is also contesting from Wayanad. In 2014, his party had polled less than one lakh votes, and in 2019, it stayed away from the contest. The fight in Wayanad, a seat held by the Congress since 2009, is primarily between the Congress and the CPI, with the BJP being a debutant like elsewhere in Kerala.

The CPI had announced Annie Raja's candidature a month before Rahul's name was declared by the Congress for the seat. Speculation was that Rahul may prefer to contest from a seat elsewhere - perhaps in Karnataka or Telangana, both of which have Congress regimes - so as to lead the offensive against the BJP.

Pinarayi Questions Rahul's Candidature

Rahul's bonhomie with Communist Party of India (Marxist (CPI-M) General Secretary, Sitaram Yechury, is visible in all INDIA bloc meetings. The Congress leader's diatribes against wealth creators and his Left-leaning stance on most issues are perceived to be influenced by his proximity to Yechury. Despite this friendliness, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, perhaps reflecting fissures within the CPI(M) itself, minced no words when he recently termed Rahul's Wayanad candidature "inappropriate". He echoed D. Raja's views, asking "Has he come here to contest against the NDA, or is the Left his target?"

Vijayan went a step further. "The Congress played a key role in levelling corruption allegations linked to the Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) liquor policy in Delhi, which led the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to go after Arvind Kejriwal. When Manish Sisodia was arrested, Congress complained why Kejriwal was not being taken into custody," he noted at a campaign rally for Annie Raja. It's thus ironic that the most prominent faces at the Ramlila Maidan protest against Kejriwal's arrest were the three Gandhis-Rahul, Priyanka and Sonia. 

Cadre Frustrated Over No Consensus

The lack of consensus and the absence of a clear direction has triggered a mass exodus from the Grand Old Party in recent weeks. Over a hundred prominent leaders, including former chief ministers and Pradesh unit chiefs, have exited. On Thursday, as many as 113 workers quit en masse in Rajasthan. In Madhya Pradesh, the number of desertions is pegged at 25,000; in fact, the BJP is hosting special camps to admit disgruntled Congress workers. The story is similar in many other states. The BJP is the gainer-and so are regional parties otherwise aligned with the Congress.

While Rahul attacks the BJP both at home and abroad and even believes that the nation would 'go up in flames' if the present dispensation is re-elected, his cadres, most visibly, are fed up with the Congress's incoherence. While quitting on Thursday, Sanjay Nirupam, a former MP who had also headed the Mumbai unit of the Congress, said the party has five power centres, all of which are at loggerheads with each other. He said caucuses around Sonia Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Vadra and K.C.Venugopal were working at cross-purposes.

Missing In Action

Given that Venugopal, who is empowered to announce all apex decisions, is himself contesting the Lok Sabha poll from Allapuzha, the All India Congress Committee office in New Delhi has been left rudderless during the election campaign. Rahul Gandhi, too, shied away from hoisting his party's tricolour when he, flanked by Priyanka, held an impressive road show on Wednesday prior to filing his nomination in Wayanad, a constituency that elected him five years ago at a time when his family's traditional voters in Uttar Pradesh's Amethi refused to send him back to Parliament. Meanwhile, a decision on candidates from Amethi and Rae Bareli, both Gandhi family bastions, is still awaited. Even Robert Vadra has thrown in his hat for Amethi in media interviews.

The political arithmetic that propelled Rahul to opt for Kerala's Wayanad as a safe seat in 2019 has not undergone a sea change. The seat has been held by the Congress since 2009 as part of the United Democratic Front (UDF) seat-sharing plan. The Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), the second biggest constituent of the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF), holds sway in this seat. Spread over Mallapuram, Wayanad and Kozhikode districts in north Kerala, it has predominantly Muslim and tribal voters. As for the LDF, it's the CPI that has got the seat this time. The party has been a close second to the Congress in the last three elections.

A Fight Over Flags

When Rahul, who was then the Congress president, filed his nomination in 2019, the presence of the IUML's flag in his rallies had provided ammunition to BJP spin-masters, for it resembles the Pakistan flag. The IUML was thus asked by the Congress to desist from displaying its flag in Wednesday's roadshow. The ally agreed, but with the caveat that the Congress, too, shall not hoist its flag. IUML chief P.K. Kunhalikutty was by Rahul's side during the roadshow, as well as his nomination.

The absence of the flags was highlighted by the BJP's Surendran and Smriti Irani. The party said Rahul was "ashamed of the IUML alliance" and thus party flags were kept at bay, and that the BJP in turn unhesitatingly waved its own flag when Surendran filed his papers. 

Vijayan, meanwhile, said the Congress was so scared of the BJP that it was hiding its own flag. Questioning why the party tricolour had become 'untouchable" to its leaders, Vijayan said,  "Congress forgot that brave patriots had suffered torture by British police while upholding the Congress flag."

Though election symbols can get changed due to splits and are variable, as what happened with the Congress in 1969 and 1978, a party flag remains constant. In fact, the party, having been such a significant part of India's freedom struggle, has the unique privilege to use the tricolour, albeit sans the Ashok Chakra. Every major Congress session since 1924 has featured that popular Shyamlal Parshad song, "Jhanda Ooncha Rahe hamara" (Our flag shall flag high). A century later, that flag has to be hidden from view, all to facilitate some coalition calculations.

Already being pushed around by its allies who do not shy away from bargaining for more seats, the Wayanad experience shows that a rather scared and besieged Congress has entered the 2024 Lok Sabha fray this time.

(Shubhabrata Bhattacharya is a retired editor and a public affairs commentator)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author