The Congress party has been plunged into deep trouble in Meghalaya as 12 out of their 17 MLAs dumped them to join the Trinamool Congress Party (TMC) on Wednesday. The 12 also include former Meghalaya CM Dr Mukul Sangma. A formal announcement is said to be scheduled for Thursday. With 12 jumping ships, Congress will now be left with only 5 MLAs in Meghalaya.
LoP in Rajya Sabha for Congress and senior leader of the party, Mallikarjun Kharge, issued a wishy-washy statement explaining the steps the party plans to take after their leaders were abandoning them and joining TMC in Meghalaya.
“This is happening like a conspiracy. People of our party, especially our party pres, Rahul Gandhi & others in the high command are looking into it. They will make a decision”, said Kharge.
This seems like a mundane wishy-washy answer that Congress generally spouts when it has a larger or at least, a hidden agenda at play. Kharge essentially shifted the responsibility and said that the party would do “something” but gave no specific details of how the party actually views this development. These sort of statements essentially create the illusion that the person concerned is giving people some explanation but there is no tangible answer that has actually been given.
What Kharge said after this was far more telling than this statement itself.
Mallikarjun Kharge said that even though he senses a “conspiracy” in Congress leaders joining TMC, the party will still ally with TMC to defeat BJP regardless of the alleged difference in ideology.
We will fight the issue of farm laws. We have also prepared a list of 15-16 issues on which we can come to an agreement & we will fight at the Parliament in unity: LoP in Rajya Sabha and senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge pic.twitter.com/vuJLMmMdCW
— ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2021
“We will fight the issue of farm laws. We have also prepared a list of 15-16 issues on which we can come to an agreement & we will fight at the Parliament in unity”, he said.
Continuing his statement, Kharge said, “Org fights have always taken place,no use commenting now. Important to fight together in the arena of Parliament as Rahul Gandhi, in a core committee meeting of floor leaders, had said that parties may have different ideologies but our common goal is to fight BJP”.
These statements by Kharge points to how Congress seems to have completely surrendered to TMC and Mamata Banerjee.
First, Kharge alleged that this was a conspiracy. Now, since Congress leaders in Meghalaya joined TMC, one would presume that he was insinuating that there is a conspiracy by TMC to dismantle the Congress party in Meghalaya.
However, right after he alleges there was a conspiracy and says that “Rahul Gandhi will take a decision”, he goes on to say that Rahul Gandhi has already taken the decision to ally with TMC in the parliament and elsewhere to defeat BJP. This would therefore mean that the “conspiracy” statement was just a preface to give the impression that Congress was taking umbrage to their leaders joining TMC, but in tangible terms, they had no problem with the development since they had already surrendered to TMC.
It is pertinent to note that Congress perhaps knows that it is a spent force and is now trying to strengthen regional parties to defeat the BJP, a feat they are sorely incapable of. The shift of Congress leaders to TMC seems to be a part of that attempt pointing to the fact that Congress has decided to annihilate itself regionally to form a working alliance to defeat the BJP wherever it might be possible.
