oppn parties Intolerant Congress Cannot Swallow Constructive Criticism, Even From One Of Its Own

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  • Supreme Court dismisses industry bodies' plea to stop the SBI from disclosing the numbers of the electoral bonds
  • NDA finalizes seat sharing in Bihar - BJP 17, JD(U) 16 aqnd LJP 5
  • Election Commission removes Home secretaries of Gujarat, UP, Bihar, HP, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand and the DGP of Bengal
  • Telangana governor Tamilsai Soundararajan resigned from his post and is likely to contest for the BJP from Chennai
  • ED claims K Kavitha of the BRS paid Kejriwal and Sisodia Rs 100cr in the alleged liquor scam in Delhi. AAP says this is a ploy to malign their names
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  • With the US Department of Justice rpobing bribery charges against Adani group companies, Adani group shares and bonds are under pressure
  • Narayan Murthy gifts Infosys shares worth Rs 240cr to his 4-month-old grandson
  • Tata Sons to sell Rs 9362cr worth shares of TCS to pare debt
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  • IOA dissolves the ad-hoc panel and gives full control of WFI to elected panel headed by Brij Bhushan aide Sanjay Singh
  • Controversy erupts after BJP leader Tathagata Roy prescribes the cicumcision test for those seeking citizenship under CAA. TMC calls it a 'vulgar jibe'
  • Rahul Gandhi concludes his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in Mumbai, holds a mega rally at Shivaji Park and says the BJP does not have the courage to change the Constitution despite making a lot of noise in that regard
  • ED issues two fresh summons to Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal in the liqour excise case just a day after he got bail in the earlier cases of ignoring the summons
  • A 14-year-old girl killed herself after she was strip-searched at school in Bagalkot in Karnataka
Election Commission orders removal of home secretaries of 6 states and the DGP of Bengal
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Intolerant Congress Cannot Swallow Constructive Criticism, Even From One Of Its Own

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2020-06-18 21:15:57

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.

Despite accusing Narendra Modi and the BJP of being intolerant and centralizing power, the Congress party has always displayed a strong dislike for anyone who questions the high command - which in effect means one family - or tries to question the way the party functions. The latest to come in the line of fire of the Gandhi family is the erstwhile spokesman of the party, Sanjay Jha. He was also the party's face on television channels in various debates on current issues. He has been replaced by Abhishek Dutt and Sadhna Bharti.

What was Sanjay Jha's fault? He tried to show a mirror to the party leadership. In a signed article in a national newspaper, Jha wondered whether the party leadership was concerned enough to bring it back on the rails. He had written that "the Congress has demonstrated extraordinary lassitude, and its lackadaisical attitude towards its own political obsolescence is baffling." He added that for someone like him who was "permanently wedded to Gandhian philosophy and Nehruvian outlook that defines the Congress, it is dismaying to see its painful disintegration." He stated that he was not alone in thinking like that and there were many in the party "who cannot comprehend this perceptible listlessness."

Instead of taking it as constructive criticism from one of its own, the party high command, as is its wont, has taken it as an affront and a sign of rebellion. It has moved quickly to cut Jha to size. If the same sense of urgency and decisiveness was displayed in intra-party matters or matters of national importance, Jha would not have had to pen the critique in the first place. The entire nation knows that Sonia Gandhi is destroying the party by foisting on it a supposedly newer version of Rahul Gandhi at regular intervals. And the entire nation also knows that Rahul is a reluctant politician and no amount of tutoring or image management will make him ready for the job.

The main agenda of any family-run political party is to project and protect the family at all costs - all other things are incidental to that. All decision-making bodies in the party are just for name and are subservient to the family. It is obvious that in such a scenario, Jha's concern for redeeming the party is a cry in wilderness. Earlier too, Sandeep Dikshit had raised this question. He had said that he was dismayed that the senior leaders of the party were doing nothing to arrest the fall of the party. He put it succinctly when he said that "sometimes you want inaction because you don't want a certain action to happen." His views were seconded by Shashi Tharoor. But nothing happened then and nothing will happen now. The Congress will not change just because some non-Gandhi's have reservations about its functioning.