The Congress-RJD breakup in Bihar means Rahul’s new policy is not letting allies ‘blackmail’ the Congress.
New Delhi: While the RJD’s decision to field its candidate for the Kusheshwar Asthan Assembly constituency bypolls might be the immediate provocation for the Congress decision to call off its alliance with the RJD, one of its oldest allies in Bihar, the larger reason behind this decision is Rahul Gandhi, who is now following the policy of refusing to “surrender” to what he calls allies’ “blackmail”.
It is also an indication of the things to come in the future as far as the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is concerned, with Gandhi making it clear that he will not accept an alliance policy in which the Congress has to take the backseat, something which had been happening in Bihar since 1998.
That he was going to move away from what has been termed as “surrendering/ compromising” ways of doing politics was made clear by him to a select group of party functionaries over a series of meetings that have taken place at his residence in the last two months. The induction of former JNU student union president Kanhaiya Kumar into the Congress fold by Gandhi, despite being made aware that it would trigger immediate backlash from RJD de facto chief Tejashwi Yadav, is also part of the new political strategy that Gandhi will be executing in the coming days, that of not being “blackmailed” by party leaders and alliance partners.
It was also due to this same way of conducting politics because of which the induction of political strategist, Prashant Kishor, who was found to be “manipulating” his entry into the party, was not allowed by Rahul Gandhi. On Friday, Bihar Congress in-charge, Bhakta Charan Das, announced that the party will contest on all the 40 Lok Sabha seats, while adding that the alliance with the RJD, which was entered into by Sonia Gandhi and Lalu Prasad Yadav way back in 1998, was now over. Such a statement would not have come from Das before discussing it with the party leadership. Incidentally, it has come just days after it became clear in the CWC meet that Rahul Gandhi will be back as the Congress president next year.
Das, who had represented Kalahandi in Lok Sabha, has served as a junior railway minister in the Chandrashekhar cabinet. In his role as the state in-charge of Bihar, in which he was appointed in January this year, Das has to fill in the big shoes of his predecessors that include Mohsina Kidwai, R.K. Dhawan, Digvijaya Singh and Shakti Singh Gohil, all of whom were given the job when RJD was allowed to act as the big brother in the alliance.
Tejashwi Yadav had strongly opposed inducting Kanhaiya into the Congress, something which Rahul Gandhi wanted to do before the 2019 general elections. The reason behind Tejashwi Yadav not allowing Kanhaiya to become active in Bihar, as per sources close to Kanhaiya, was the fact that they are both the same age, both are good orators and both have following among the youth and Yadav felt that if Kanhaiya was allowed to join Congress and contest the elections, he will soon become a challenger for Yadav in Bihar in the coming years.
At that time, Rahul Gandhi, on the advice of his mother, Sonia Gandhi, relented. However, since the last two months, he had made it clear that he was going to induct Kanhaiya, even if that meant upsetting Tejashwi and the RJD.
The alliance between the Congress and the RJD in Bihar and the induction of RJD into the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) happened just after Sonia Gandhi became the president of the Congress party in 1998 and she was immediately attacked by the Opposition leaders for her “foreign origin”. At that time, it was Lalu Prasad Yadav who sprang to defend her and attack her former party leaders like P.A. Sangma and Sharad Pawar who, too, started a movement against Sonia Gandhi.
The two parties first contested elections in an alliance during the 1998 general assembly when Bihar and Jharkhand were one. At that time, out of the 54 Lok Sabha seats, 11 were contested by Congress, out of which it won five seats. Later, during the 2000 Bihar Assembly elections, all the 23 winning Congress MLAs, who supported the RJD, who had won 103 seats, in forming the government in the state, were made ministers by Lalu Prasad. At that time, veteran Congress leader Mohsina Kidwai was the state in-charge. Post the 2004 general elections, Lalu became a part of the close group of Sonia Gandhi and he was given a total free hand when it came to managing the alliance in Bihar. Such was his stature at that time that a powerful Congress leader like R.K. Dhawan, who had replaced Kidwai, would go to Lalu’s house to take directions.
During this period, Lalu would decide from which seat and how many seats the Congress will contest from Bihar and Jharkhand. The same situation continued even during the time of former MP CM Digvijaya Singh who later replaced R.K. Dhawan. Lalu even decided the Congress candidates.
The first breach in the relationship between the alliance occurred in 2009 Lok Sabha polls and subsequently, the 2010 Bihar Assembly elections. This breach coincided with the rise of Rahul Gandhi in the Congress, who at that time too wanted Congress to stand on its own in as many states as it could. As a result, no one from the RJD joined the UPA-II ministry when it came back to power in May 2009. Incidentally, the only man whom Lalu considered his political guru was former senior Congress leader who went on to become the speaker of the Bihar assembly, Radha Nandan Jha. Lalu ensured that Jha was allotted the next door bungalow to 1 Anne Marg, Patna, where Lalu lived when he was the CM. Rare were the days when Lalu would not go to Jha’s house to have morning tea. However, that bonhomie is now likely to become a tale of the past.