Beyond the Robert Vadra issue- Real problem of Congress is lopsided priorities…

The Robert Vadra controversy surrounding his brazen behavior with an ANI reporter could not have come at a worse time for Congress. Close on the heels of a series of electoral debacles which started almost two years back, things continue to go downward for the Congress with no end in sight.

When it all started...

It all started with the drubbing it got in the Gujarat Assembly elections in December , 2012, followed by humiliating defeats in assembly elections of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and being relegated to third position in Delhi in December last year, which was followed by it being reduced to its lowest ever tally in Lok Sabha elections in May this year. But the series of drubbing did not end there. It continued with Congress losing power in both Haryana and Maharashtra even as the positive momentum centered around Modi and BJP remaining more or less intact.

With a clueless Congress still unable to come to terms with the phoenix like rise of Narendra Modi and the manner he catapulted BJP to power and swept away Congress, murmurs of dissent and questions about the leadership capabilities of Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi have been increasingly becoming more prominent.

The Mishandling of the Robert Vadra Issue

And just when Gandhi family loyalist Digvijay Singh thought that by again raising the issue of bringing Rahul Gandhi into the top position of Congress would be good enough to quell the murmurs of dissent, the fresh controversy surrounding Robert Vadra's apparently arrogant behavior with an ANI news reporter and the inability of the Congress Party to take a neutral stand and condemn it have once again put Congress on the back foot.

There is no doubt that the Robert Vadra issue, especially the ones related to his questionable land deals in Haryana, has been one of the most prominent ones during the Lok Sabha elections and even during the recently concluded Haryana assembly elections, issues of land grab and favoritism shown to Vadra by the Hooda Government were raised by BJP frequently. And now the visible show of anger and threats to ANI reporter by Vadra has given major shot in the arm to the opposition parties and especially to BJP.

The Real Problem with Congress

In a way, Congress is still grappling with the key question of how to counter Narendra Modi led BJP. Its own leadership continues to be in utter disarray with Rahul Gandhi seemingly as disinterested now in party affairs as he has always been. In fact, the failure of the Congress party to find the real flaws in its poll debacle and its penchant to keep the Gandhi family out of the ambit of blame for poll loses, is costing it much. The Congress stand on the issue of Robert Vadra seems to be no different and its vitriolic barbs at the media would do no good to the party as such.