The slide!

The slide!

Twitter followers of Indian politics may not have missed Indian National Congress’s tweet, which I have posted below. Its English caption read, “PM Modi took the adage, “keep your enemies closer” a little too far. The post depicted a marching-forward Abhishek Banerjee, MP from the All-India Trinamool Congress, whose party fought the recent West Bengal assembly elections against the BJP and the Congress, Left and ISF combine. The Congress and the Left failed to win a single seat.

The Congress Tweet further begins with an “AAP chronology samajhiye,” which led me to think that the Congress party has finally patched up with its bête noire, Arvind Kejriwal his AAP party.  The Hinglish Tweet was instead addressing you and me. It explained who Abhishek was, who, I guess, is more popular in West Bengal than Rahul Gandhi. He was a target of Pegasus spyware, the Tweet claimed, keeping silent on its own alleged spying victim Rahul Gandhi.  It ends with ‘Modi Govt’s insecurities are endless.’

Erudite Congressmen like Sashi Tharoor seem to be on leave, which explains the poster with crocodile tears for a party MP who is an alleged target of Pegasus. It has not been drafted by anyone south of Vindhyas for its Hindi flavour contents. The Tweet contents are significant with the recent appointment of Mamata Banerjee as the leader of the AITC parliamentary party, the country whispering Mamata as a probable candidate for PM’s post in 2024 and her tightly scheduled visit to Delhi, over meetings with opposition leaders, including one with Sonia Gandhi.

The seemingly olive branch extended by the Gandhis have not amused the West Bengal State Congress, which bore the brunt of a Left alliance that came with clumsy baggage called ISF. The state Congress has none inside the Assembly and is busy safeguarding whoever is left in their party.

Congress party, the only national party in India besides the BJP, has gone several notches down by its listless and directionless activities. Converting a meaningful opposition role into an often-meaningless hostile character has not added any value to it.

Where went all the intellectuals and true Congressmen into hiding? Where are the Group of 23? They must rise to start revamping the party seriously, or else, handover the baton of their party to Mamata Banerjee to merge INC with AITC and lead from the front.

Sampath Kumar

Intrépide Voix