Congress is ready for the poll battle

The fact of Congress president Sonia Gandhi addressing back-to-back rallies in places as far apart as Assam and New Delhi on Sunday can be said to mark the decisive phase of the campaign to elect the 16th Lok Sabha. The Congress chief had so far not done any campaigning.

While Mrs Gandhi very much remains president of her party, and is recently thought to have given the final signal to senior Congress leaders to enter the election fray (despite their reported reluctance in some cases) to boost the party’s morale, she had mainly remained in the background, partly for reasons relating to health.

Her decision to address as many as 50 election rallies in different parts of the country suggests that the Congress is stepping up the tempo in a bid to tell voters, as well as its current and future political allies, that the party has not given up on the contest, contrary to the impression sought to be created earlier in the campaign, partly on account of the self-effacing style of vice-president Rahul Gandhi in the initial phase of electioneering.

Such a tactic is necessary to sustain the interest of the allies and lend some credence to scenarios that non-BJP parties — with the Congress providing the muscle — are very much in with a chance despite the massive political marketing by the BJP and its PM candidate Narendra Modi.

Mr Modi, of course, has shown himself to be a master of the art of political projection and PR. He is scheduled to address as many as 185 rallies between now and the middle of May when the last votes will be cast. He popped a surprise in Chandigarh over the weekend where he spoke as if he was already Prime Minister. This not only denotes his burning ambition. That was clear long back when on August 15 last year he erected a replica of the Red Fort and delivered his Independence Day address from there, mimicking the real Prime Minister.

The Gujarat leader’s Chandigarh reference is surely intended to project a leader who is imbued with confidence, even if this may seem exaggerated to some.

Perhaps Mr Modi found it necessary to project a super-cool image, of a leader who knows, on account of lots of things going wrong lately with his party’s campaign. This has included open and big rebellions in key states due to the disregard of local sentiment in selecting candidates and preferring turncoats to long-term party hands. The induction into the party of reviled elements such as Ram Sene chief Pramod Muthalik and Sabir Ali in Karnataka and Bihar respectively, has also hurt the BJP’s image at a key point in the election campaign.