Congress President Sonia Gandhi made her first appearance in the monsoon session of Parliament on August 9, 21 days after it started. She had stayed away because of health reasons and was welcomed to the house by the Congress members. Among the leaders who ushered her in was her son, former party chief Rahul Gandhi, who has emerged out of her shadows in the session, showing not just his willingness for deeper involvement in his party’s parliamentary strategy but also a confidence to engage with other opposition players.
Though Rahul had earlier refused to take over as the Congress’s leader in the Lok Sabha in the monsoon session, he displayed a newfound proactiveness in all parliamentary matters. The changes include a much-improved attendance (he had missed most of the session last year when he accompanied Sonia to the US for her medical check-up), the regularity with which he has been asking questions and, more significantly, his emergence as a key strategist for the party as well as coordinating with other opposition parties.
Rahul had long been criticised for his seemingly indifferent attitude to Parliament, and his detractors gleefully pointed out his below-par attendance and the low level of involvement in parliamentary procedure.
The Congress leader held meetings with opposition leaders and addressed media conferences, and his performance in Parliament was complemented outside with a tractor rally to express solidarity with the protesting farmers and a cycle ride to highlight the issue of high fuel prices. He also visited the parents of a girl who was allegedly raped and murdered in the capital and attended the farmers’ mock Parliament session, held to protest the three contentious farm laws.
If the Pegasus snooping scandal provided the opposition ammunition to attack the government, it formed the backdrop in which Rahul enhanced his engagement with other parties. As he addressed a media conference on the issue, there was a conscious effort to come across as a leader who takes everyone along. He insisted that the other opposition leaders also share their views.
The much-hyped breakfast meeting Rahul hosted for opposition leaders, which was attended by about a 100 MPs from 15 opposition parties, was apparently his brainchild. It marked a departure from his earlier reticence in engaging with opposition leaders and also heralded his entry into a domain that has long been Sonia’s forte.
An enthused Congress described it as a “historic day” and a “trailer for 2024”. Party leaders pointed out that, unlike Rahul’s Rafale campaign, when he was alone in his attacks on the Modi government, his call for a unified opposition strategy on Pegasus has found far greater support. And there is speculation whether political consultant Prashant Kishor, who is learnt to be on the verge of joining the Congress, played a role in crafting Rahul’s new approach.
The Congress’s whip in the Lok Sabha, Manickam Tagore, however, insisted that Rahul has not changed and has been consistently taking on the Modi government. “Mr Gandhi has consistently focused on the anti-people, anti-democratic policies of the Modi government. He met the opposition leaders and his message to them was that we might have political or ideological differences, but in the backdrop of Pegasus, which is nothing less than treason, the parties have to occupy the common ground, sit together and decide a coordinated strategy,” he said.
While the transformation in Rahul is a positive one, the real test for him is to keep the momentum going, said political scientist Abhay Kumar Dubey. “A major complaint about Rahul Gandhi is that he lacks consistency. A politician’s job is 24x7. You cannot do it according to your whims and fancies and go on vacations at crucial junctures. While he has delivered telling blows to Modi in the past, such as the ‘suit boot ki sarkar’ jibe, he has been a politician in the stop-start mode,” he said.
Meanwhile, it is felt that Rahul’s display of proactiveness has much to do with the Mamata Banerjee effect and the fear in the Congress on the buzz that regional parties were looking at possibilities of forming a front. Buoyed by her victory over the BJP in the assembly elections in Bengal, Mamata is attempting to project herself as a challenger to Modi and a convenor of opposition unity.
“Mamata Banerjee’s visit to Delhi has had a positive impact on opposition unity,” said a Trinamool Congress leader. “The Congress getting its act together in Parliament has a lot to do with her appeal to the Congress leadership for the need for all of us to get together.”
The complicated nature of the Trinamool’s association with the Congress or the uncertainty about the Aam Aadmi Party’s support to Congress-led initiatives or the distance maintained by Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party point to the inherent contradictions among the anti-BJP players. Elamaram Kareem, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s floor leader in the Rajya Sabha, said it would not be correct to say that the opposition unity was because of the initiative of a single person. “From the beginning of the session, the opposition parties have demanded a discussion on the important issues of Pegasus, the farmers’ plight, inflation and Covid-19. Throughout the exercise, right from the beginning, there has been opposition unity on these issues,” he said. He said the decision to visit the farmers’ protest was a collective one, but the presence of Rahul did help in getting media attention.
Rashtriya Janata Dal’s Rajya Sabha member Manoj Jha also disagreed with the view that there was a change in Rahul and sought to put the focus on the “excellent floor coordination” of the opposition parties. “It is just that the lens through which Rahul Gandhi is being viewed is different. I don’t find anything fundamentally new in him,” he said.
Jha said the parties need to get over a person-centric discourse. “I have been saying this, and I said it at the breakfast meeting, too, that before we form an alliance of parties, there should be a coalition of ideas and a coalition of struggle. We have to take away politics from this highly person-centric discourse, which does immense damage to the institutional framework which is supposed to sustain democracy,” he said.
Also, while the situation is being extrapolated to 2024, doubts remain over the acceptance of Rahul by other opposition parties. There is a wide gap when it comes to the popularity of Narendra Modi and Rahul. The presence of prominent opposition leaders like Sharad Pawar, Akhilesh Yadav and Derek O’Brien at the dinner hosted by Congress leader Kapil Sibal has been taken note of and comparisons were being made with Rahul’s breakfast do.