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The Leader of the Supposition

In India's Grand Old Party, the more things change, the more it looks the same. In the past few months, the Congress has veered off the beaten track to chase a few unbeaten records. It elected a non-Gandhi as president. Its permanent president-in-waiting, Rahul Gandhi, started a 3500-kilometre-long Bharat Jodo Yatra without any major jinxes. He stuck to the schedule and got unprecedented traction from party cadres, although habitual social activists from India and abroad piggybacked on his star trek for photo ops. Desertions from the party have reduced. But the perception that the Gandhis remotely control the GOP persists. Though Mallikarjun Kharge is the notional party chief, the choice of Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu as Himachal Pradesh CM confirmed that the family takes the final call. The presence of Rahul and Priyanka at his swearing-in bolstered the perception. Moreover, senior party panjandrums are frenetically popping antacids as the family drags its feet, choosing the new leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha. According to party policy, one person can hold only one post. Ashok Gehlot, Sonia's first choice for party president, was asked to choose one post; he stuck to Jaipur. But Kharge isn't in the mood to practice what he preached. Sonia is yet to accept his resignation as LOP. Now he, as Sonia's successor, can't decide on his own offer.

Does the Kharge conundrum put Congress in the doldrums? Karnataka goes to the polls early next year, and insiders whisper that the Gandhis are conflicted about replacing their pet Dalit icon. They're looking for a loyal lackey who can't be compromised by the BJP's dirty tricks department. Historically, Congress has rarely chosen an upper caste personality as LOP in the Upper House. The redoubtable UP Brahmin Kamalapati Tripathi was the last; during Janata Party rule in 1977. Since then, the post has gone to someone from a minority community or a Dalit, like Manmohan Singh, from 1998 to 2004. When BJP eviscerated the Congress in 2014, Sonia's double-engine opposition was Kharge as LOP in the Lok Sabha and Ghulam Nabi Azad in the Rajya Sabha. Veteran Congressmen were bemused by Kharge being brought into the Rajya Sabha and made LOP over colleagues who have served two or three terms. Anand Sharma, a Brahmin and the RS deputy leader, was bypassed. It's not that Congress lacks talent. It has power packs like Digvijay Singh, P. Chidambaram, Pramod Tiwari and Rajiv Shukla. But they are either from the elite or the upper castes. The Gandhis could choose a younger loyalist like Mukul Wasnik or K C Venugopal to replace Kharge. Obviously, merit, capability and verisimilitude as the traits of a credible parliamentarian still have no place in the Gandhi-managed eco-system.

Double Trouble for Saffron States

The Himachal Pradesh debacle has given the BJP's Double Engine Sarkar slogan a flat tyre. After all, it polled barely less than one per cent of the vote than the Congress and still lost Shimla. The BJP has been urging voters to elect the same party at both the Centre and the State for faster and better development. Now an internal debate around the fading glitter of this electoral formula is slipping into top gear. The big question is "which engine failed to haul the party back into power". PM Modi is indeed its most powerful engine. It feels that had Modi spent more time electioneering in Himachal, it would've returned to power. This suggests that Jairam Thakur, as chief minister, wasn't a fully charged second engine. On the other hand, the BJP won Gujarat for the seventh consecutive time with a record 156 seats. Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel was no second engine; Modi and Modi alone was in the driving seat surging ahead at supersonic speed. But the Gujarat political model doesn't fit all sizes. Barring UP, Uttarakhand and Assam, BJP's double engine narrative hasn't delivered many states even after Modi secured his second mega mandate with over 300 MPs. Saffron couldn't form the government in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh. No majority in Haryana, Karnataka and Goa either. It lost twice in Delhi and once in Bihar. It couldn't convince West Bengal voters to give the double engine pitch a fist bump. It was gutted in Punjab. Evidently, voters in Assembly polls choose engines that can propel their state forward. For them, Modi is the first engine of the national bandwagon with the most horsepower and fuel economy. Voters don't trust local party leaders that well. Since over a dozen states go to the polls before 2024, sequencing the Double Engine narrative poses a big challenge for BJP. Unless they find an equally turbocharged second engine as Modi, no double engine is likely to take the BJP limo all the way to the mantralayas.

Reshuffle Chills on Raisina Hill

South Block scuttlebutt speculates whether First Engine Modi will dump some rusty compartments from the BJP gravy train. Some of them are causing a lag down by depending on the PM to take them to their destination. Does it mean a massive cabinet reshuffle after the winter session? Predicting Modi's moves is a hasty hobby, his unpredictability being his USP. A large portion of his 78-member Council of Ministers is well spoken. But the cadre feels that some of them aren't doers and are hardly connected with ground reality. How will the repackaged Cabinet look as a matter of conjecture? Will the excessive representation of Rajya Sabha members be trimmed in the pruned Cabinet? Presently, 10 of the 91 BJP members in the RS hold vital posts like Finance, External Affairs, Petroleum, Commerce, Telecommunications, Health, Education and Industry. Three ministers are from the Services and have little experience in practical politics—good at desk jobs but electorally untested. Perhaps a couple of them may be replaced with Lok Sabha MPs who have to seek votes for the party in less than 24 months. The PMO has set up a special cell to monitor the performance of every mantri. Ministers' social media obsession and competitive sycophancy wouldn't get them any birth in the Cabinet since visibility with credibility is the new benchmark for survival. Fair-weather birds feathering their nests with a conveniently conceived conviction for Hindutva and nationalism are likely to be shafted. Ek Bar Aur in 2024 is the war cry. Modi aims to be the second Prime Minister and first non-Congress leader to win three consecutive elections since Independence. To score that record, he will have to get rid of NPAs in his current team first.