With the sobering message from Tuesday’s election results sinking in, the Congress has opted for caution over imprudence.
NEW DELHI: With the sobering message from Tuesday’s election results sinking in, the Congress has opted for caution over imprudence. Contrary to the enthusiastic pronouncements by some spokespersons, who hyped the 3-2 tally in favour of the
Congress, the leadership is not inclined to fast-forward the Lok Sabha election.
In fact, legal experts in the Congress, who have studied the intricacies of the Constitution to determine how far the general election can be pushed back, believe that the polls can commence as late as May.
This is because of a provision which says that the term of a Lok Sabha is calculated from the date it first meets. Since the present Lok Sabha convened on June 2, 2004, the next need not meet until June 2, 2009. This gives the Congress some more breathing space to gear up for the challenge. But it has not taken a final view on this yet.
While the election date is a matter of debate in the Congress, it is clear that the presentation of the Union budget for 2009-2010 will be left to the next government. The Manmohan Singh government will merely call a brief session of Parliament in February-March to pass a vote-on-account to facilitate government spending till a new dispensation assumes office.
A party leader who spoke on the condition of anonymity said it would be wrong to read too much into the results of the just-concluded round of assembly elections. “Every election is different,” he said. “Just because terrorism was not the main issue in these polls does not mean it has disappeared from the radar. It is a national concern and we will have to tackle that challenge in a parliamentary election.”
Another leader said the party’s failure to take Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh away from incumbent BJP governments spoke of serious organisational weaknesses in the Congress. “We will have to go in for a proper reshuffle at the headquarters if we want to win in 2009,” he said.
More importantly, the party has to take a view on the critical leadership question. There were indications on Tuesday that the Congress may ratchet up Rahul Gandhi’s profile for the Lok Sabha polls and do a dual projection of experience (Singh) and youth (Gandhi).
Gandhi has so far been reluctant to play a more dominant public role, but the BJP’s flop show in Delhi may prompt a change of strategy. The resounding rejection of yesteryear leader VK Malhotra in Delhi has set the Congress thinking about pushing Rahul forward to grab the youth vote, estimated at about 30 crore.
The Gandhi scion has been campaigning for the party in all the assembly elections since Himachal Pradesh last winter, but his forays have been low-key, more in the nature of roadshows than giant rallies. But as news of Congress victories in Mizoram and Rajasthan came in on Monday, at least two leaders, Prithviraj Chavan and Ved Prakash, appeared on television to give Rahul the credit.
These are some of the issues for the leadership to tackle. Given the slow nature of decision-making in the Congress, the party needs time to take a final view before it swings into election mode.
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