Editorial: Rahul Keeps Up The Momentum

Having assumed his first Constitutional post as Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi has taken his detractors by surprise by getting his act together and refusing to relax after the brief Parliament session ended. In a flurry of visits, he first rushed to Hathras, scene of the dreadful stampede that claimed over 120 lives, mostly women and children, and then to Gujarat, where he reiterated his claim made in Parliament that the INDIA bloc would defeat the BJP in the next Assembly elections, just as it had in Ayodhya. Then he headed to Manipur, his first visit to the troubled state after he became LoP. The Gujarat visit was to condole with the kin of victims of the Morbi bridge collapse and the Rajkot fire, and in response to the vandalising of the Congress office in Ahmedabad the day after his explosive speech in the Lok Sabha where he accused the saffron brigade of following a hate-filled agenda quite contrary to the principles of genuine Hinduism. In making a distinction between the real Hindu and in his view the fake Hindu, he rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, including the RSS. Harping on the theme of freedom from fear, Rahul Gandhi tried to stress on the Mahatma’s principles of love and universal brotherhood. Stating that the attack on the Gujarat PCC office had proved right his thesis about two kinds of Hinduism, he said the BJP’s agenda is one of hatred and violence. He urged party workers to prepare for the next Assembly election, three years away, in right earnest so that the BJP can be bested in its own bastion just as it was in Ayodhya despite the grand inauguration of the Ram temple in January.

By visiting Manipur, Rahul Gandhi wants to keep the focus firmly on the state that has been in the midst of ethnic turmoil for well over a year now. This will be his third visit to the state after the violence began in May last year. After maintaining a stoic silence on the issue for months on end, Prime Minister Narendra Modi finally spoke on the topic in the Rajya Sabha. In his reply to the motion of thanks on the President’s address, he assured the nation that normalcy was returning to the sensitive Northeastern state. There have been diverse views on the effectiveness or not of Rahul Gandhi’s maiden speech as LoP, but one thing is certain — he raised controversial issues that forced even the Prime Minister to intervene and clarify, something that has never occurred in the past decade of Modi rule when the BJP had an unassailable majority. That a host of Union ministers also stood up to defend the government was proof that the Congress leader had ruffled many feathers. It remains to be seen if the Opposition momentum is maintained in the upcoming Budget session of Parliament.