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Congress GenNext steps forward

First it was Sachin Pilot. Now it’s Jyotiraditya Scindia. These two prominent GenNext Congress leaders are challenging the old guard…

Congress GenNext steps forward

Jyotiraditya Scindia

First it was Sachin Pilot. Now it’s Jyotiraditya Scindia. These two prominent GenNext Congress leaders are challenging the old guard to be their party’s chief ministerial nominees for the assembly elections later this year in their home states of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh respectively.

Pilot strengthened his claim by crushing the BJP to a 3-0 defeat in last month’s bye-polls in Rajasthan. Scindia is going all out to emulate Pilot’s feat in MP where bye-elections were held on February 24 in two assembly seats.

These bye-polls are particularly crucial for Scindia because both seats are in his Lok Sabha constituency and family home turf of Guna. Like Pilot, who did a 24×7 campaign for the bye-elections in Rajasthan, Scindia left no stone unturned to prove to his party his credentials as a BJP slayer.

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In two weeks, he has addressed 75 rallies and done 15 roadshows, crisscrossing the two constituencies like a man possessed. In sheer effort, he has outdone MP chief minister Shivraj Chauhan who could not manage more than 40 rallies and 10 roadshows in the same period.

More significantly, the youthful Congress leader pitched the battle everywhere as “Scindia versus Chauhan”. In this way, he made his intentions very clear, that he is the main challenger to Chauhan and hopes to be named as his party’s CM face if he pulls off a 2-0 victory in these bye-elections. Results will be out on Wednesday.

The Rajasthan bye-polls were seen as a semi-final to the upcoming assembly election. So are the MP bye-elections. The upcoming assembly elections are critical for both the BJP and Congress which are in a direct one-to-one fight in both states. Along with Chhattisgarh, the elections in these three states will set the stage for the general election next year.

Old guard still in fight

While young leaders like Sachin Pilot and Jyotiraditya Scindia are pushing themselves forward to usher in a generational change in the Congress, the old guard is not ready to let go as yet.

There are many voices in the Congress that are pitching for old hand and three-time CM Ashok Gehlot to lead the party campaign as the CM nominee in the assembly polls. Their argument is that Pilot neither has the experience, nor the money power, nor the savvy to defeat Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan, even though she is very unpopular.

Similarly, senior leaders are pressing for old warhorse Kamal Nath to be the CM nominee for MP. They have put forward the same arguments to hold Scindia as they are using against Pilot.

In MP, the battle for the Congress is particularly difficult. Chauhan is a veteran who has held the post of CM for some 14 years. He is deeply embedded in MP and despite the Vyapam scam, he has managed to retain his hold and his popularity. Even the Modi-Shah duo, which doesn’t care for strong regional satraps, has not dared to unseat Chauhan.

Rahul Gandhi will have the final say, of course, on who will lead the Congress charge for the assembly. But there is a concern that he may allow himself to be spooked by the old guard to refrain from making the generational change that’s so necessary to breathe new life into the grand old party of Indian politics.

Turmoil in I & B

The war in the I & B ministry continues unabated. The latest battlefront is a letter from the Indian Information Service Officers’ Association to the PMO complaining against “mindless mass transfers” by minister Smriti Irani.

According to the letter, signed by a senior Doordarshan official who heads the association, Irani has shifted some 140 people ever since she took over last year.

Now, Irani is a minister who likes to shake things up. And there is no doubt that both the Press Information Bureau and Doordarshan need spring cleaning. But Irani’s overzealousness has irked the Indian Information Service which took the unusual step of complaining to the PMO.

I & B sources say that this is probably the first time that the IIS association has picked up cudgels against the minister.

Among the “mindless” transfers that have upset IIS officers was the shifting of a non-Tamil speaking DD official to Chennai. The Hindi speaker was hustled out of Delhi to man a news bureau which functions entirely in Tamil. Naturally, he was totally at sea.

According to I & B sources, he wrote a letter to his seniors saying that he does not speak Tamil. Consequently, he said, he should not be held responsible if mistakes happen or an item contrary to government policy goes on air.

Akhilesh for RS?

An interesting tidbit is emerging from Lucknow that SP chief and former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav could enter the Rajya Sabha in next month’s biennial polls for the Upper House. As many as 55 seats are up for grabs and the results will help the BJP finally overtake the Congress in terms of numbers. But it will still be far away from the majority mark.

As many as five SP members are due to retire in April, including stalwarts like Naresh Agarwal and Jaya Bachchan. And SP’s strength in the UP assembly has plummeted so drastically after its crushing defeat in last year’s polls that the party can send only one MP to the Rajya Sabha.

Speculation is rife that Akhilesh may choose to claim that seat so that he gains a forum to showcase himself for 2019 and a platform to articulate his party’s views on national issues. Ever since his party’s defeat last year, Akhilesh has been out of the limelight. In today’s publicity-driven times, a politician must dominate social media and hog news space on television to remain relevant.

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