New Delhi: For over a decade, Congress president Rahul Gandhi has at some point or the other raised pressing issues concerning the poor, the marginalised and against corruption.
Be it spending a night with a poor tribal family in Bundelkhand’s Tikamgarh in 2008, getting arrested in Noida’s Bhatta Parsaul while showing solidarity with farmers in 2011 to taking up cudgels on behalf of the Niyamgiri tribals, the Congress president has championed many such causes.
That, however, is just one half of the story. Gandhi has also disappeared once the initial euphoria has died down, resulting in these agitations fizzling out and the causes losing their relevance.
ThePrint revisits five such issues that the Congress president was at the forefront of but did not revisit later.
Farmers’ agitation in Bhatta Parsaul
The agitation in western Uttar Pradesh, which began in May 2011, hogged the headlines when four people were killed in police firing. The farmers in Bhatta Parsaul village were protesting the forcible acquisition of their land for public projects by the then Mayawati government.
In July that year, to show solidarity with the farmers, Gandhi visited the village on a bike at midnight. He was arrested and subsequently released.
The incident grabbed headlines and gave a big fillip to the Congress ahead of the 2012 assembly elections. Gandhi visited Bhatta Parsaul again in February 2012. It was Gandhi’s agitation that was behind the 2013 land acquisition legislation brought in by the then Congress-led UPA government.
After creating all the noise, however, Gandhi did not revisit Bhatta Parsaul after 2012. He failed to participate in a padayatra, organised by the Congress, in the twin villages in 2015. The padayatra was to protest the new land acquisition law brought in by the BJP-led NDA government, which diluted several provisions of the 2013 legislation.
Batting for rights of tribals in Niyamgiri Hills
Before Bhatta Parsaul, Gandhi had taken up cudgels on behalf of the Dongria Kondh tribals living in and around the Niyamgiri hills in Odisha in 2010. The tribals were protesting against the setting up of a bauxite mining plant by the UK-based Vedanta group.
The tribals said the plant that would come up in a forested area would have had an adverse impact on their livelihood. The then UPA government had refused to give environment clearance to the project.
After his initial show of solidarity, however, Gandhi did the disappearing act. Although he has been to Odisha many a time since, he has not visited the tribals of Niyamgiri.
Also read: India Today & Times Now couldn’t decide what to prioritise – a Yeti or Rahul Gandhi
Bundelkhand farmers
In 2008, Gandhi made headlines after he spent the night with a tribal family in their mud house in a remote village in Tikamgarh district of Bundelkhand. The farmers in the region were committing suicide following a prolonged drought. Gandhi’s visit did ensure that the then UPA government came up with an economic package to help the farmers of the region.
Again, although Gandhi has been to Bundelkhand after 2008, he never went back to the village to see if the plight of the poor family he had stayed with improved or not.
The Congress has also performed dreadfully in the Bundelkhand region, comprising seven districts of Uttar Pradesh and eight districts of Madhya Pradesh. In the two Lok Sabha elections since Gandhi’s visit, the party has not won even one seat in the region.
Gandhi visited Bundelkhand last week to address public meetings ahead of voting in the region, which is scheduled for 6 May.
Handed over land to farmers in one case, to Adanis in another
Last November, Gandhi had promised farmers in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar that if the Congress came to power it would return their land, acquired many years ago for a proposed Tata steel project. The project was abandoned after the farmers’ protest.
In February 2019, Gandhi was present when the land was returned to the original owners following the Congress government’s return to power.
But even while it handed over the land to the farmers in Bastar, the Congress and its government in Chhattisgarh remained silent when the Modi government recently gave preliminary forest clearance for an opencast coal mine in the state’s densely-forested Surguja and Surajpur areas. The mine is to be operated by Rajasthan Collieries Limited, a subsidiary of the Adani Enterprise.
Tearing up ordinance disqualifying convicted legislators
In 2013, following the Supreme Court ruling that chargesheeted legislators will be immediately disqualified on conviction, the then Manmohan Singh government had brought an ordinance allowing such legislators — be it MPs or MLAs — to continue, pending a hearing on their appeal.
Gandhi, who was the then Congress vice-president, had stormed into a press conference being held at Press Club in New Delhi and said that the ordinance was “complete nonsense”.
“It should be torn up and thrown away. That is my personal opinion,” Gandhi had said.
In September 2018, however, the Supreme Court reiterated its ruling where it said that a lawmaker whose conviction in a criminal case has not been stayed by an appellate court, stands disqualified from holding membership of the house.
The principled stand, taken by Gandhi in 2013, however, has withered with time. The party has fielded many candidates with a criminal past in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Also read: A message for Rahul Gandhi in Milind Deora courting Mukesh Ambani and Uday Kotak
Rahul has taken issues to their logical conclusion: Congress
Pranav Jha, Congress secretary in-charge (communications), says that contrary to false assumptions, Gandhi’s politics has been all about taking up issues and making them reach their logical conclusion.
“He took up the land acquisition issue in Bhatta Parsaul and ensured that the Parliament enacted the historical farmer and citizen-friendly land acquisition legislation,” Jha said. “Despite Modiji’s brute majority, Rahulji ensured that all attempts to dilute the land bill in 2015 were jettisoned.”
Similarly, Jha added that Gandhi’s taking up the cause of rights of tribals on their jal, jungle and jameen resulted in the Niyamgiri hills being left untouched and corporates moving out.
“Thanks to his tearing of the ordinance you see none convicted duly contesting elections. None of his initiatives ‘fizzled out’ but resulted in historical achievements. And a leader takes up a cause wherever he sees injustice,” Jha said.
“Once the issue is redressed he needs to move on rather than milking and creating media events out of them, like our Prime Minister does.”
There is no commission involves in the cases of poor and Adivasis. Modi did Ujwala scheme, built roads, built toilets, provided electrixity. What Congress did.
I do not know which world the author lives in. No mature adult in India actually expects Rahul Gandhi or Modi to come down and solve their problems and then keep visiting them every year as if they have no other work to do.
What nonsense are you writing? I am a physician. When a patient comes to me, I solve his problem and then follow it up till completion. After that, I do not go visiting their houses every time that I am in their neighbourhood, do I?
Grow up people.
Championing a cause should not stop with one procession.Congress has a wing for Adivasis .They should have conducted a survey all over the country,made area wise projects ,if necessary under MPs or MLAs funding,involved Nationalised Banks for effective co-ordination,induced Big industrialists to give monitory and technical support for development.If necessary get the support of IIMs for identifying,preparing and implementing projects.
To my mind nothing has been done during their regime.
NDA also did not do much.
Will the Next Govt take up this issue seriously and find a solution.
The author forgets completely that it was after Rahul’s visit to the Dongria KOndh community that later, the SC struck down the acquisitions by Vedanta . So he achieved the main goal. Why does he have to take up residence in the Kondh areas ?
Similarly, Bhatta Parsaul was a part of the overall fight against unfair acquisitions and later, rahul and Sonia agitated successfully to force PM Modi’s Govt to with draw their amendments . So,that was an achievement in itself.