Congress leader Rahul Gandhi recently called the chief of an airline to demand the caste profile of the passengers, leaving him in shock and disbelief, reported Open Magazine on Friday (12th April).
According to the report citing unnamed Congress leaders, Rahul Gandhi’s several divisive agendas like caste census and blatantly asking for caste profiling from private entities – airlines in the recent case, have not gone down well with the general masses as well as within the rank and file of the Congress party.
In the article titled, Congress: Is the Party Withering Away? , the magazine has included the grouses from Congress insiders who are increasingly becoming critical of the party leader’s unhinged divisive agenda, the limited political capital of the party’s decision-makers, and special outreach for minorities.
Highlighting a particular incident, the Open Magazine reported that recently the head of an airline got a call from Rahul Gandhi. After customary greetings, Rahul Gandhi demanded, “Can you (airline official) share with me the caste profile of people who travel on your airline?”
As per the report, the airline chief “found the query strange and bordering on the frivolous. It left him with a sense of disbelief.” He added that his team never demands information about the caste of the passengers.
When the airline chief turned down his demand, Gandhi appeared confused and disconnected the call. It stressed that the shock that the airline chief felt mirrors the sentiments of a large section of people, including Congress members.
Congress leaders miffed with Rahul Gandhi over divisive agenda: Reports
The article stresses that a lot of Congress leaders have expressed discontent with the agendas, current leadership being influenced by an inner circle of “featherweight” individuals who have no connection to ground reality.
Listing several dozens of prominent exits from the Congress party, the Open Magazine highlights that the disconnect of Congress leaders is such that prominent faces of the party have decided not to contest these polls barring in a few states like Rajasthan.
On condition of anonymity, a Delhi-based Congress leader told the Magazine, “Congress is caught in multiple jeopardy, most damaging being the absence of leaders with institutional memory and crowd-pulling abilities in the campaign for 2024 and the ineffectiveness of weak leaders who are virtually the gatekeepers of the inner circle.”
Expressing displeasure with the special outreach for minorities in the Congress manifesto, the leader said, “I feel all this is a contrived outreach to the minorities.”
In a scathing criticism, a senior Congress leader from Kerala said, “People within are not openly talking about it (party’s stance out exits); they know that a cabal is controlling Rahul Gandhi and that it is advisers who are either bitter (for whatever reasons), or who have no ear to the ground, who influence Rahul to express puerile ideas and be a bleeding heart without a cause.”
Rahul Gandhi and his obsession with caste
It is pertinent to note that earlier two senior Congress leaders Anand Sharma and Abhishek Manu Singhvi had come out to oppose Rahul Gandhi’s clarion call for caste census and ‘Jitni Abadi Utna Haq’.
Gandhi scion, Rahul who has been pushing the divisive agenda of caste-census in his election rallies, had courted controversies several times for putting people in harm’s way. In an infamous incident, the Congress leader in a verbal meltdown asked a journalist what his and his employer’s caste was, leading to a near lynching of the journalist by a mob of Congress supporters.
Additionally, the Congress leader has been pressing on the issue further by publicly seeking caste profiling of Ministers, senior government officials, and management in media industries, and has now reportedly taken it to the airlines industry.
