Counterpoint: What does Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification mean?

Counterpoint: What does Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification mean?

 By Vivekanand Jha*

As I watched the press conference where Rahul Gandhi responded to his disqualification from Lok Sabha yesterday, the Congress scion did make me mull the “deep-rooted” relations between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and business tycoon Gautam Adani, and where from that huge amount of rupees twenty thousand crores, the Rahul mentioned, suddenly cropped up in the hands of the shell companies of Adani conglomerate?

Rahul said in his press conference: “Please understand why I have been disqualified. I have been disqualified because the Prime Minister is scared of my next speech. He is scared of the next speech that is going to come on Adani. I have seen it in his eyes. So, he is terrified of the next speech that is going to come and they don’t want that speech to be in Parliament. That is the issue, that is why first the distraction, now the disqualification,” he said.

Doesn’t this make it look like Rahul Gandhi’s expulsion from Lok Sabha was hasty and unwarranted, especially when thirty days were given to him by the Session Court of Gujarat to file his appeal against the order of disqualification, in the case of defamation, where he had purportedly sought to defame the people with the surname of ‘Modi’?

Also read: Lok Sabha Secretariat showed undue haste in disqualifying Rahul

The Congress believes that his disqualification smacks of a larger conspiracy to rid the Parliament of any tangible criticisms from the Opposition, especially when Rahul Gandhi was harping upon Modi– Adani equation. But will the court of law uphold such a contention?

After all, the Opposition led by the Congress Party had all through been demanding the setting up of a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to probe the Adani issue and this resulted in the logjam in Parliament.  Against this backdrop, it Rahul’s expulsion indeed looks hasty and someone in Kerala even moved the Supreme Court to challenge the automatic disqualification system as ‘unconstitutional’.

Besides, one is bound to wonder whether the BJP, unequivocally and willy-nilly,  gave Rahul Gandhi a far higher moral ground now to play his victim card. Such a surmise will hold good till the time the apex court passes its verdict on the issue. 

On a larger platform, the Rahul episode has indeed succeeded in raising the question that when investigative agencies are set upon almost all the Opposition leaders, not even a single raid, even for the sake of symbolism and tokenism, was conducted against the Adani conglomerate, which the Opposition feel, had unleashed such blatant infamy and opprobrium upon the nation’s overall credibility in the corporate governance.

With hindsight, it does sound baffling beyond words why not any investigative agency is set upon to investigate the Adani Group following the charges against it by the US short seller Hindenburg among others. This indeed has given Rahul an opportunity to raise questions hinting at the Modi-Adani nexus that promotes crony capitalism with impunity and project himself as a martyr after daring to raise this issue.

Having said so, Rahul Gandhi’s condemnation of the so-called degeneration of Indian democracy in London, and seeking the intervention of Western power for course correction, was simply traitorous, especially contrasting with his grandmother’s refusal to speak a single word against the Shah Commission or the then Janata Party government of the day, which she considered as doing good to the nation. Indira’s refusal to criticise the then government in the foreign land which purportedly had gone witch-hunting against her, won her laurels, whereas Rahul Gandhi’s disparaging remarks against the democracy of his own country, unequivocally appear in bad taste.

But the latest episode of his expulsion has taken the wind out of the sail of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), for Rahul might now emerge as the pivot of the Opposition unity. Significantly, All the accusations of his maligning the nation in foreign territory, even though was getting salliance with the people before his expulsion, from Lok Sabha, invariably lent credence to the evergrowing perception that the BJP was in a tearing hurry to get rid of the Gandhi scion; to get rid of the uncomfortable questions that he sought to raise to the Treasury Bench, which found them absolutely vexatious.

Indeed, it is clear that today, notwithstanding the facts churned out by the battery of spokespersons of the BJP, it is Rahul Gandhi who somewhat succeeds in projecting himself as the martyr for being wrongly targeted for taking on the central government.

Prime Minister Modi needs to come out with the truth pertaining to his relations with Adani, and whether there has been a total failure of the mechanism of corporate governance in the country.

*Author, Academician and Public Intellectual. The views expressed are personal.