BJP's Mala Raj Laxmi Shah wins Tehri bypoll
The defeat of Uttarakhand CM Vijay Bahuguna's son Saket in the Tehri byelection came as a shocker. Bahuguna senior has won the seat in 2009, and his elevation as the CM was expected to help his son romp home by a bigger margin. By-elections tend to go ruling party's way, and hopes of benefits from the CM should have given Congress a clear edge.
In the event, BJP's Malarajya Laxmi Shah won by comfortable margin of 22,694 votes.
Pranab Mukhejee's son Abhijeet survived a scare before making it by a mere 2,536 votes. Mukherjee, in alliance with West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool, had won by a margin of over 1.28 lakh votes. Mukherjee junior's margin looked all the more unimpressive because Banerjee, despite her split with Congress, had decided not to field a candidate.
To add to Congress's worries, two newly-launched Muslim outfits walked away with 66,000 votes.
According to an agency report, Abhijeet put down his slender margin to the "issues of inflation and FDI".
The disappointing results came in the wake of a huge setback that Congress suffered last week when Prashant Bhushan and Arvind Kejriwal managed to breach the immunity of party chief Sonia Gandhi by raising the issue of son-in-law Robert Vadra's controversial dealings with real estate biggie DLF. Although Congress has defended Vadra saying that no illegality has been proven, party sources agree that Bhushan and Kejriwal may have managed to drag the issue of corruption uncomfortably closer to 10, Janpath.
Given that Sonia has been the mainstay of the party and was instrumental why it could regain its pre-eminence after the NDA regime, it must rank as the biggest blow. The breach in the armour could tempt more attacks and this was evident on Saturday when yoga guru Baba Ramdev unleashed a frontal assault on Congress's "first family".
Though of only doubtful political consequence, Ramdev's attack on the "family" was, with the possible exception of Narendra Modi's barbs during the 2007 Gujarat election, was scathing since Sonia acquired an aura after UPA's win in 2004 and because of initiatives like Right to Information Act, rural employment guarantee scheme and aggressive secularism.
With the spate of corruption charges continuing to sap party's image, and stubborn inflation taking a toll as well, party circles have begun to weigh the merits of completing the term. A school in the party favours bringing forward elections and scheduling it just after finance minister P Chidambaram, helped with a waning influence and a stronger rupee, has presented a feel-good budget with food security and cash transfers scheme as its highlight. Another opinion suggests that the party should hold on until September for the message of Chidambaram's budget to percolate.
Whatever comes of the debate: a view is unlikely to be taken before the outcome of Gujarat polls and the political class is increasingly looking at the inevitability of a parliamentary election next year. Last week saw UPA component NCP and Mayawati taking the view that Congress may go in for an early polls. And, SP and Trinamool Congress Mamata Banerjee had expressed the same view earlier.
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