- Sunday, February 23, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
THE Indian National Congress, the main opposition to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), seems to be more desperate to make an impact in times of the Covid-19 pandemic.
On Thursday, Congress president Sonia Gandhi told party leaders and workers to put pressure on the Narendra Modi government to speed up the daily vaccination rate so that 75 per cent of India’s population gets the jab by the end of 2021. She also asked her party to play an active role in ensuring complete vaccination coverage and addressing vaccine hesitancy before a possible third wave hits the country.
Gandhi spoke on the matter after the BJP accused the Congress of encouraging vaccine hesitancy. She also spoke on the “white paper” that the Congress brought out earlier this week addressing the Centre’s alleged mismanagement of the Covid situation. She said the document is being translated in other languages and needed to be disseminated widely.
Former party president Rahul Gandhi, who released the “white paper”, has also been critical of the Modi government’s handling of the pandemic. He has also blasted the Centre over non-payment of ex-gratia compensation to the kin of those who died of the virus while calling the government’s mega Central Vista project a “criminal wastage”.
The Congress has also been targeting the Modi government on issues like vaccination policy and the rise in prices of commodities, including fuel, saying they are hurting the common man when jobs are being lost and economic recovery is far from satisfactory.
India’s grand-old party, which found itself decimated twice by Modi in national elections, and by a number of local leaders in various states, faces an emergency situation. The party’s next big battle lies in states like Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat and others in 2022 and it faces Modi for the third national contest two years after that.
Has the party found a stronghold as an opposition party in times of the pandemic and can it hope to make a turnaround before the next set of electoral battles?
According to the Congress, it is doing a good job as an opposition party in times of a pandemic. Although its “white paper” has been blasted by the BJP which has said that the Congress always tries to create a hurdle when the government is putting up a good show, the Congress feels what it is doing is constructive criticism.
‘They call us weak, then how are we obstructing?’
Keshav Chintaman Ketkar, a Rajya Sabha (the Upper House of the Indian Parliament) member of the Congress, mocked the BJP’s charges saying the ruling party often says that the Congress is weak. “Then how come we are creating obstacles on their path?” he asked while speaking to India Weekly. “With the kind of majority this government has, it still blames the opposition saying it creates hurdles?”
Ketkar, who is a member of Parliament from Maharashtra where the Congress is in power in alliance, then slammed the Modi government saying it could never comprehend the seriousness of the Covid situation in the country. “In March last year, Modi called a sudden lockdown that left several lakhs of migrant workers on the roads. That was a time when the death toll was low. And now, officially three lakh people have died, unofficially even more. Is this not a mismanagement?” he said, citing how western countries like the United States prepared for the crisis.
‘Congress works in country’s interests’
Pradip Bhattacharya, another parliamentarian and a former Congress chief of the state of West Bengal, said the Congress never acts like an irresponsible opposition. Recalling former prime minister Manmohan Singh’s letter to his successor Modi in April in which he suggested ways to ramp up vaccination across the country, Bhattacharya said the Congress always acts in the country’s interests.
“Dr Singh advised the Modi government in good faith. The white paper was also released to make constructive suggestions to the government. The Congress praised the government on its vaccine drive. But let me say that in a welfare state, those are the government’s primary responsibility. In my home state Bengal, a lot of NGOs have come to help the Indian government in its vaccination drive. We have done our job as an opposition but this government is busy with politics,” Bhattacharya told India Weekly.
‘We never distracted the government’
Pradeep Tamta, another senior parliamentarian of the Congress party, also rubbished the allegation that his party is trying to blame the government for the sake of it.
“On the first day under the revised guideline of vaccination, the results were good. But what happened on the second day? Did you see how the numbers in Madhya Pradesh dipped? (the BJP-ruled state which gave a record 1.7 million vaccine doses on June 21 could manage to administer less than 5,000 doses the next day). This government had no plan whatsoever on how to manage the Covid situation. We have seen how people have died because of shortage of oxygen and beds in hospitals. Therefore, it is not right to say that the Congress is distracting the government. Rather, we are showing the way forward to a confused government,” Tamta told India Weekly.
Why Maharashtra, a Congress-ruled state, was hit badly?
While all these senior leaders were aligned in their viewpoints on targeting the Modi government’s Covid management, there seemed to be less consistency when it came to the story of Maharashtra, one of the worst affected states in the country.
When asked what the Congress has to say against the BJP’s accusation that a state ruled by the Congress has seen the worst outbreak of the pandemic (Maharashtra has reported 60 lakh or six million cases of Covid-19, making up a fifth of India’s tally of 30 million), Ketkar said it is the state’s population that made it difficult to manage Maharashtra. He also said that being an industrialised state, Maharashtra sees workers and labourers coming from all over the country and because the Centre called the lockdown hastily last year, many of them could not return home and became victims of the virus and it spread from them in the state.
Bhattacharya said it is not a question of which party is ruling which state. “Tell me why bodies have been found floating in the Ganga in Uttar Pradesh? That state is not ruled by the Congress. What will be the BJP’s answer to that?” he told India Weekly, adding that since people from various places are mingling at one place, as is the case in Maharashtra, so super spreaders are not unusual.
On the question of Maharashtra experiencing a deadly virus outbreak, Tamta said more than the state government, it is the duty of the Centre to look after the states and the entire country. It is because of their failure that all states in the country are suffering, he said.
Did the Congress take a step back when asked about the situation in Maharashtra when they are blaming the Modi government’s management of the pandemic?
Subodh Kumar Sajjan, an assistant professor at the department of political science of Ramanujan College, Delhi University, feels it has.
“The Congress has not been able to keep itself connected to the ground, something the BJP has done more successfully. As long as the party has a culture of highhandedness, this character of the party will continue. It is not that the BJP government has handled the Covid crisis perfectly, but the Congress hasn’t done anything extraordinary as an opposition at this time,” he told India Weekly.
“The party clearly is desperate to make an impact as an opposition party and to regain its lost guard, it is blaming the Modi government for the sake of it. But before blaming the Centre, it should see how things have gone in Maharashtra which it rules,” Sajjan said.
