The Times of India
‘G-23’ leader slams Congress tie-up with ISF
NEW
DELHI: The dissenting ‘G-23’ bloc’s showdown with the Congress
leadership sharpened significantly on Monday with deputy leader in Rajya
Sabha Anand Sharma slamming the party’s alliance negotiations with
Indian Secular Front (ISF), a Muslim outfit headed by a firebrand
cleric, in West Bengal, saying it went against the “Nehru-Gandhi
secularism”.
Sharma’s strong comments, coming a day after another
leading ‘G-23’ member, Ghulam Nabi Azad, praised PM Modi for being
“upfront” about his roots, dealt an embarrassing blow to Congress in the
middle of seat-sharing negotiations for the election campaign in five
states.
Referring
to the joint Kolkata rally of Congress, Left and the ISF of Furfura
Sharif cleric Abbas Siddiqui, Sharma tweeted, “Congress’s alliance with
parties like ISF and other such forces militates against the core
ideology of the party and Gandhian and Nehruvian secularism, which forms
the soul of the party. These issues need to be approved by the CWC.”
He
added, “Congress cannot be selective in fighting communalists but must
do so in all its manifestations, irrespective of religion and colour.
The presence and endorsement of the West Bengal PCC president is painful
and shameful, he must clarify.” In Jammu over the weekend, where G-23
leaders attended a function to felicitate Azad, the J&K leader said
though he and Modi were opposed politically, the PM did not "hide his
reality".
The comments are a spoiler for Congress which was
optimistic that the massive show in Kolkata would help it position
itself credibly in the polls that have otherwise turned bipolar between
Trinamool Congress and BJP.
This also came after the letter writers,
at a public rally in Jammu, expressed concern that Congress was
weakening by the day. Sharma’s barb suggested that tensions between
Congress and the G-23 may be coming to a boil. “It may explode if the
leadership does not become inclusive and listen to dissenters who are
being blocked by a coterie,” a letter writer said.
While Congress
and Left announced a deal among themselves last month, the ISF emerged
as a late entrant in the alliance talks as the former were encouraged
that its presence would consolidate Muslim votes in favour of the
combine. The two parties also put a condition that the ISF should not
join hands with the AIMIM of Asaduddin Owaisi.
Bengal Congress
chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury was quoted as saying, “We are in charge of a
state and don’t taken any decision on our own without any permission.”
It implied that the state unit was going by the nod from the
headquarters. Interestingly, Congress and ISF have not held talks and
only the Left has negotiated seats with Siddiqui.
The red flag
from within Congress may hurt the party’s morale in Bengal and Assam as
Sharma’s denunciation rings close to the campaign theme of BJP that
Congress is partisan towards “minority communalists”.
It
also came on a day Congress’s Bihar ally RJD, led by Tejashwi Yadav,
junked the ‘grand alliance’ to throw its lot with Bengal CM Mamata
Banerjee and urged “Biharis” to vote for TMC.
While
G-23 members refused to react on the issue, Punjab MP and dissenter
Manish Tewari said, “My foremost objective is to defeat BJP. Like
earlier, wherever the party asks me to campaign, I will be more than
eager and willing to do so.”
The
back-to-back comments from Azad and Sharma triggered unease in the
dissenters’ bloc even as Congress wrestled with how to react to the
developments. A senior letter-writer said negotiations with “minority or
majority communalists” could be questioned but “the timing was bad and
could not be supported”.
