Rahul Gandhi Won’t Resign as Congress President
Rahul Gandhi will have to realize that it will not be possible for him to defeat Modi and BJP with traditional vote-based politics.
By Rakesh Raman
After its crushing defeat in the recently concluded Lok Sabha election, there have been rumors that Congress president Rahul Gandhi will resign from the post of Congress president.
However, in today’s meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) in New Delhi, the speculation about his resignation was put to rest. The top brass of the traditional party concluded that the Congress chief should not take the full responsibility of party’s electoral debacle.
The election results declared on May 23 showed that Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has won the election to retain power in the country of 1.3 billion people and 900 million voters. Modi will be the PM again.
BJP won 303 of the 543 Lok Sabha seats and BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) got 353 seats to form the government for the second consecutive 5-year term. A party or a group needs 272 seats to win the Lok Sabha election.
On the other hand, the main opposition party Congress performed poorly and could win just 52 seats while the Congress-led group United Progressive Alliance (UPA) tottered at 92-seat mark.
Although Rahul Gandhi had led massive political campaigns to highlight Modi government’s failures and his own party’s plans, Congress could not win. Major opposition political parties and millions of voters in India believe that as usual Modi and BJP tampered with electronic voting machines (EVMs) to win election deceptively.
However, Rahul Gandhi failed to resolve the EVMs issue while Congress’s and other opposition parties’ petitions against EVMs to the Election Commission of India (ECI) and even to the Supreme Court of India were rejected. Even today most Indians have serious doubts about the BJP’s victory because the EVMs factor is still lurking as an unresolved conundrum.
As it is expected that Rahul Gandhi will continue as the Congress president, he will have to completely change his leadership strategy. He will have to realize that it will not be possible for him to defeat Modi and BJP with traditional vote-based politics. Today, there is no other national-level leader except Rahul Gandhi who can pose some resistance to Modi’s monopoly.
Rahul Gandhi will have to constitute a new team around him and chalk out an unconventional plan to start a new movement to save India and Indians from the claws of cruel politics. And that is possible.
By Rakesh Raman, who is a national award-winning journalist and social activist. He is the founder of a humanitarian organization RMN Foundation which is working in diverse areas to help the disadvantaged and distressed people in the society. He also creates and publishes a number of digital publications on different subjects.
Photo: Congress
