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Getting jittery?

It requires little political insight to discern a degree of desperation in Sonia Gandhi’s calling upon the Prime Minister to…

Getting jittery?

Sonia Gandhi (Photo: SNS)

It requires little political insight to discern a degree of desperation in Sonia Gandhi’s calling upon the Prime Minister to have the ill-fated Women’s Reservation Bill resurrected and adopted by the Lok Sabha.

In making the point that Narendra Modi commands a thumping majority in the House, the Congress president admits her failure to persuade the allies of the UPA to push through what she tries to project as her pet legislative initiative ~ a point underscored by her mentioning that in 2010 the Bill had been approved (amid unhealthy scenes) in the Rajya Sabha. Of course she forgot to mention that the BJP had voted in its favour on that occasion.

Gandhi’s writing to the Prime Minister would not have given rise to lowly misgivings had the Congress party not sought to project it as some kind of political ace. The party is struggling to find a stick with which to beat the government ~ actually there are several available but it lacks the leadership-capability to exploit them to advantage ~ and seems in dire need of “something” around which to rally voters in 2019. If that is indeed the case Gandhi has blundered in her choice.

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The legislation had been blocked by the very parties with whom she has been attempting to forge an anti-BJP front. It might also turn out that reviving the Bill could be her “last hurrah”, the buzz is that Rahul will be taking control of the Congress in a few months. The grapevine also has it that the government was planning to move the Bill afresh, so Sonia opted for one-upmanship to claim the credit.

Yet any such gains would be negated if Modi’s 2019 campaign battle-plan also included having made women’s reservation a reality. It is something of a desperate gamble that a jittery Congress president is taking. As expected her acolytes hail it is a game-changer ~ but in whose eventual favour? What Sonia’s move underscores, in a larger perspective, is the lip-service to women’s welfare that political parties have been playing for several years.

The UPA preferring the Rajya Sabha route, when aware that it would not get through the Lok Sabha was as sinister as it was “cheap”. And the motivation is not more elevated now since the Congress is aware of how vehemently opposed to reservations Yogi Adityanath had been, and possibly the aim is to try and cause the NDA as much embarrassment as the UPA had suffered.

Whether women do get a third of the seats in the legislatures is a “side issue”. But where the Congress move could backfire is that if the government opts for reservations the Lok Sabha will endorse it ~ the Modi-Shah duo could succeed where Sonia-Manmohan had bit the dust.

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