Mrs Sonia Gandhi said in so many words that Dr Y S Rajasekhara Reddy was minting money – by foul means than fair – during his term in office; but he remained loyal to the party, and so she allowed him to go on. Indeed, he made him CM for a second term, in contravention of the precedence of making the Pradesh Congress Committee chief the CM. That the Congress is a corrupt party is a well-known fact: Mr Rajiv Gandhi himself bemoaned the state of affairs at the centenary celebration of the party in 89 or so – saying that it has become the shelter for power-brokers and wheelers and dealers.
Mrs Sonia Gandhi seems to have resigned herself to the fate of overseeing a corrupt-to-the-core Congress party, and getting a semblance of order into the affairs. She is also in the unenviable position of not having the mass appeal such as her late mother-in-law, or even the charisma of her late husband. She is handicapped by limited knowledge of Hindi, which is all important in Indian politics. She has the tag of a ‘foreigner’ attached, and to the middle class India, it conjures up an image of colonial rule. Except for her illustrious surname (and some family cash resources), she has nothing much going in her favor.
Mr Jaganmohan Reddy knows this fully well. He thought he could ‘blackmail’ her in terms of raking up a sympathy wave (as did Mr Rajiv Gandhi) and forcing her ‘hand’ to make him the CM. The mistake he did was to agree to Mr K Rosaiah’s name in the wake of his father’s death: he thought it was only a temporary arrangement, and that he would be anointed sooner than later. He got desperate when it appeared that Mr Rosaiah was well entrenched in the CM’s gaddi. That was when he made his first wrong move, and the costliest wrong move – in a series of suicidal moves: defying the party high command and proceeding with the second leg of his Odarpu Yatra (consolation tour).
Now, as long as you remain loyal to the party (=high command) you can go scot free with any number of misdeeds: all will be forgiven, except defiance. For one thing, Jagan is a young man in a hurry. And then again, he is not sure of what will be the outcome of the 2014 elections – there is the T-issue, there is Chiru looming large, and many imponderables. He had to act, and act now. It was a catch 22 situation for him: damned if he acts, damned if he don’t.
The high command responded with an invite to Chiranjivi to 10 Janpath: Chiru took the cue and played along. He knows full well that in the long term, a Congress party sans Jagan puts the political calculations in his favor, whether or not he enters into an alliance with the Congress. That is the story thus far.
What is going to unfold in the near to mid term?
Jagan is going to run out of steam; he is not going to be expelled from the party. He cannot topple the government (if he could, he would have done that long ago). Launching his own party at this juncture is pointless, because there will be no elections until 2014.
Speculation that he will join the BJP is all nonsense: what has he to gain from such a move? Precious nothing. The BJP’s 4 percent vote share in the state will not equal the muslim votes Jagan is going to lose if he joins hands with them. Then again, he will not be crowned king in that party.
The speculation arises from the thinking that the Gali brothers are a kind of bridge between Jagan and BJP. True, but the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) bosses are not happy about the influence the Gali brothers have on the party in Karnataka – and with Ms Sushma Swaraj at the center.
In the near term, nothing is going to happen; in the medium term – a new CM (from Telangana) will be named: it could be Dr J Geetha Reddy.
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