Unofficially Official: Mallikarjun Kharge Rules Out ‘Remote Control’ Jibe; Unable To Dispel Wight Of Gandhis  

Amidst the controversies and jibes from both the opposition parties and the political critics for his selection as the presumably official candidate of Gandhis, Senior Congress leader and contender for post of party president, Mallikarjun Kharge today said that there is nothing like ‘remote control’ in his party.

Kharge was in his visit to Ahmedabad to campaign for the presidential polls. Addressing the party workers, he said that unlike the Bharatiya Janata Party, where every president is selected through a ‘consensus’, Congress believes in democracy.

The Octogenarian leader was apparently found responding to the jibe of BJP that if Kharge is elected the ‘remote control’ of the party would be with Sonia Gandhi. Dismissing such baseless allegations, he asserted that if he becomes the head of the grand old party, he would have the remote control with him.

“A lot of people say I am a remote control and work from behind. They say I will do what Sonia Gandhi will say. There is no such thing as remote control in Congress, people take decisions together. It is your thinking. A few people are creating this idea,” Kharge said.

Hitting fresh salvo at BJP for its ‘consensual’ process of presidential selection the Dalit leader from South India said, “How many times has the prime minister held (party president's) election? All the presidents were selected through consensus, and you are teaching me? Where is the remote control in the BJP? When I become president, the remote control will stay with me.”

Showering praise for Sonia Gandhi for the sacrifice she and her family made Kharge said that she had made a renowned economist the country's prime minister (Manmohan Singh) rather than taking up the post herself or considering her son for it.

She hails from a family that has sacrificed its members for this nation and has even spoken of pardoning the killers of her husband, Kharge added.

These words of praise for Gandhis accompanied with his story of emergence makes one think whether he is ‘unofficially official’. A Dive into his emergence as favourite may give a clear picture.

Emergence of Kharge as the ‘Official’ Presidential Contestant

Interestingly, Mallikarjun Kharge was not a name that was discussed since the beginning of the poll fervour within the Congress. he is that black horse that woke up just before the final lap of the race making others confused and uncertain. If Kharge wins, perhaps he will be appropriately called the ‘accidental president’.

Had there been no rebellion shown by the Ashok Gehlot-loyalists in Rajasthan on that crucial Sunday when the party seniors Kharge and Ajay Maken were present at his residence to decide the next CM of the state, there would have been no Kharge as presidential candidate.

Similarly, if Gehlot could have distanced himself from his loyalists, today’s political equation would have been different. But the unravelling of the script presented Kharge as the undisputable candidate of the Congress party. Though Sonia Gandhi clearly said that there is no official candidate for the party, Kharge’s submission of the nomination flanked by even the G23 leaders, a dissenting group where Kharge’s only contender Shashi Tharoor earlier belonged to, represented a different picture.

In this context, the allegations of BJP that Sonia Gandhi would control Kharge from distance is difficult to wipe out. The political observers thus have noted the presidentship of Congress in presence of Gandhi family members is difficult to shift to the hands of Non-Gandhis. And even if it happens her/his fate is tied to that of Sitaram Kesri whose nameplates were removed silently to anoint Sonia Gandhi as the President of the party in 1998.

Vacant Benches and Tharoor’s Conviction

Far away from Ahmedabad where Kharge was dispelling the presumptive clouds hung over his ‘independence’, another contestant Shashi Tharoor was addressing 12 party workers in Chennai. Though he appealed to the 700 plus Congress delegates to vote for him, only 12 persons turned up to listen to him.

Keeping aside the question of official candidate the Kerala MP said, “It is their loss if they are afraid to attend my meet. We could have had a constructive exchange. The Gandhis have clarified that they have no official candidate. We will dispel the myth that Kharge is the official candidate.”

Focussing on his ten-point agenda comprising of decentralisation of power, booth level strengthening of party, utilising general secretaries for Nation building activities he though tried to give it an ideological swing everything seems short in front of the blessings of Gandhi that probably he could not garner.

In this political context, political observers are anticipating that Tharoor may go back to G 23 or may get cosier with other dissenting constituents.

So, Kharge’s unofficial support from the ‘official’ makes the Congress election much easier to anticipate than it earlier used to be.