Amit Vs Ahmed: Whoever Wins The RS Battle, Shah Has Already Damaged Congress

The country will know by evening whether Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s top aide and troubleshooter Ahmed Patel makes it to the Rajya Sabha for the fifth time from Gujarat. The only thing that appears certain at this point is that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) two main candidates, Union Minister Smriti Irani and party president Amit Shah will be securing their seats in the upper house until 2023. The battle to watch out for is between BJP’s third candidate, Balwantsinh Rajput, former chief whip of the Congress in the Gujarat assembly, and Patel.

Congress had 57 seats in the assembly before the Rajya Sabha election saga began. Six MLAs have since resigned. Seven MLAs are in Shankersinh Vaghela camp whose relative Balwantsinh Rajput is contesting on a BJP ticket. The long and short of the story is Congress is one vote short of the magical number. If it manages to secure that one vote, Patel will win, otherwise the contest will be decided by second preference votes, which will decisively go in BJP’s favour, as explained in this Swarajya article.

But whoever wins the Shah Vs Patel battle, the BJP chief may have already checkmated Congress. Consider the damage his moves have done to the grand old party of India.

First, the damage to the party’s prospects is more direct and severe in Gujarat, especially in the light of the current situation. The resignation of six Congress MLAs, including the party’s chief whip, followed by Vaghela’s exit with seven more MLAs, have set the alarm bells ringing for the party’s high command. However, the Congress didn’t cover itself in glory when it sent its flock of the remaining 44 MLAs packing to a luxury resort in Bengaluru just when they were needed at home, where the state is facing a terrible flood situation. Visuals of BJP MLAs, including the Chief Minister, helping their constituents while Congress MLAs resting in a resort in faraway Karnataka may have done incalculable damage to the party’s electoral chances in the upcoming assembly polls scheduled for later this year.

Second, when the MLAs were holed up in the resort, the Income Tax Department unleashed raids at the premises of prominent Karnataka Congress minister D K Shivakumar, who is said to have made arrangements for the stay of the Gujarat MLAs. Though the party cried foul both inside and outside Parliament, news of the I-T raids unearthing crores of rupees from Shivakumar’s properties has been a public relations disaster of mammoth proportions for the Siddaramaiah government, whose image is far from clean. Karnataka goes to the polls next year and is the last remaining bastion of the Congress in the south. And in the process of saving Patel’s Rajya Sabha seat, the party has shot itself in the foot.

Third, apart from real electoral damage, Patel may find it hard to emerge from this episode with his image unscathed. Always a backroom player, Patel had created an aura of mystery around him, projecting himself as a consummate political player on whose pleasure or displeasure careers are made or destroyed in Congress. That may have been true but Shah’s moves have forced Patel to emerge from his backroom into the open in order to save his seat. The man who until recently used to decide the fate of others is now made to feel uncertain about his own. His mysterious image now lies in tatters.

Congress should not fail to see the bigger picture and learn the lesson Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah are trying to send by going after Patel’s seat: this is not the BJP of the past. If you are not on our side then your politics is not safe, even if you are Sonia Gandhi’s closest aide.

No matter who wins today, Shah may have already succeeded in doing significant electoral and PR damage to Congress from which the party will find it hard to recover.