Congress party blames media for covering ‘only Modi rallies’ and overlooks the shortcoming of its own leader in attracting crowd.
Congress party has an inherent property of not accepting the facts. It ranges from the bigger facts of bad foreign relations with many countries which landed the country into the war soup, to more internal issues like leadership and governance.
But the party is constantly in denial mode never learning from the repeated mistakes.
Recently, Congress cancelled many of its public rallies which included name of big-wigs like prime minister Manmohan Singh and party vice-president Rahul Gandhi. The media was speculating that the behind the move was the shortening crowd at their leader Rahul Gandhi’s rallies.
When Congress general secretary Shakeel Ahmed was asked about this, he denied the speculations saying that the leaders had addressed rallies as per their schedule and that prime minister’s rally was cancelled due to royal visit by Japan Emperor.
Interestingly, Ahmed rued that media was covering only Bhartiya Janata Party prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s rallies and overlooking other leaders. “Five Chief Ministers are campaigning for Congress – Sheila Dikshit of Delhi, Virbhadra Singh of Himachal Pradesh, Vijay Bahuguna of Uttarakhand, Oommen Chandy of Kerala and Bhupinder Singh Hooda of Haryana. But the attitude of media is somewhat surprising that they are giving publicity to the public meetings of Modi,” he complained.
It should be noted that Rahul Gandhi’s rallies, reportedly, recorded shortening of crowd. In fact, when campaigning for Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit, public left in the middle of his speech. Dikshit had to step up and practically beg people to stop for listening Rahul’s speech.
His speech, as heard, does not contain anything new. In the districts of all five poll-bound states, Rahul had nothing new to say. He was asking for votes either on emotional grounds or policies, especially food bill, which has been devised for the vote-gaining purpose by the central government.
Also, he never raises questions or never debates on real or local issues. Even if he mentions them, he refrains from going into details and making any sensible comment.
Unlike Rahul, Modi has been constantly drawing crowd in every state he went to. At the same venue, where Rahul had to face public’s ignorance, Modi’s rally was jam-packed with people lining the periphery of the venue too.
Modi has been slamming UPA government left, right and centre for its governance lapse and bogus policies. Also, his soaring popularity is attributed to the fact that he has a great experience in administration and is considered an able leader by the public. Au contrair, Rahul Gandhi has been signed off when it comes about leadership.
However, the media fraternity may agree with Ahmed’s opinion as it gets worthy material for discussion and debates from Modi’s rallies. What could be a better proof than NDTV’s telecast change when it shifted to Modi’s speech only from showing Rahul and Modi in separate panels from two rallies? (Check R Jagannathan’s article on it.)
It is time that Congress comes out of the denial mode and stops blaming media. It would be better if they paid more attention to the proper grooming of their leader whom they so happily want to work under.
