Mobilenews24x7 Bureau
A long drawn face off over the moot issues remained in an animated suspension as the Parliament was declared sine die after the perpetuating drama that ended in a whimper. None of the sides could reach out to the people’s preferred hope and the opposition also seemed to be an embattled conglomeration achieving nothing.
Numbers were on the sides of the NDA and it did the way minimum required in the three days long No Confidence motion to which the much expected deliberation from the Prime Minister was very minimal over Manipur.
Good that such ruckus do not have much bearing on the ballot boxes else it would have impacted the voting.
It were all a battle of perception as the opposition would have all of us believe and for the BJP it was a question of guts and prestige, in which both the blocks have failed.
It was old wine in new bottle
It was clear that the PM used his political forte to outflank Rahul and his cohorts and the latter could not do much against Modi’s firepower of numbers.
Sadly, the mention of Manipur that triggered the No Confidence had a mere mention of just 5 minutes of his two hour long speech and Rahul could do a 15 minutes bashing PM verbal exercise. Some of them being expunged as well.
Surprising that politics has not moved on since 2013 when the Modi versus Rahul Gandhi clash first started defining public discourse as the BJP mounted its offensive to come to power in 2014.
Nine years later, after two decisive victories which have reduced the Congress to a mere rump of its former self, the BJP, for some inexplicable reason, appears to be stuck in the same paradigm.
“It is ironic that Modi and his entire team of speakers in the Lok Sabha spent inordinately disproportionate time slamming the Congress for its past sins instead of reassuring the people of Manipur, and through them, the rest of India, that their lives, women, properties and places of worship will be safe, protected by the unwritten, sacred social contract between the citizens and their rulers in a democracy” opined a column in The Hindu.
The atmosphere was so full of negativity that even Rahul Gandhi’s flying kiss (or was it, since neither Lok Sabha TV cameras nor BJP MP Hema Malini captured the moment) was turned into a stick to beat the Congress leader with.
Yet no remorse
All said and done, the gist from the debate was the Opposition’s abysmal failure to corner the government on Manipur. The “double-engine sarkar’’ (the Modi government at the centre and the Biren Singh-led BJP government in Imphal) was very much on the defensive for failing to douse the flames that were lit on 3 May.
