Sonia not just breaks the myth of Modi’s invincibility but shows the way for the fight too

The message behind Sonia Gandhi’s riposte made at Raebareli on Thursday, or April 11, to refute the BJP’s invincibility as has been the case in 2004 when the Congress could win more Lok Sabha seats than the BJP goes well beyond the few words uttered by her in front of journalists at the time of filing her nomination papers.

Among other things, her refrain reminded how she, as the UPA chairperson, could not only humble the BJP but also successfully bridge the numerical gap between the seats won by the Congress and the majority mark in Parliament with the support of quite a few other parties. This also began a process that kept the Congress-led governments in power and the BJP on Opposition benches for the next ten years.

So by offering a virtual flashback from the time of the fall of the late Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Government, Sonia Gandhi, while being in her constituency, has, indeed, among other things tried to keep, or possibly seek, peace and accord with non-BJP parties. Her remark was perhaps also meant to make a plea to underplay the likely rivalries that may crop up among different Opposition parties in subsequent six phases of polls that are scheduled for a little over a month’s time from now.

Significantly, Sonia Gandhi filed her nomination papers from Raebareli on a day when polling was underway in eight other constituencies of Uttar Pradesh. The Congress fielded only six candidates out of the eight to ensure that Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief Ajit Singh and his son Jayant don’t face a rival from the Congress while taking on the BJP’s Sanjeev Balyan and Satyapal Singh in Muzaffarnagar and Baghpat respectively.

This also reciprocates the move by the three UP parties, including that of Ajit Singh, besides Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party, to avoid putting candidates against Sonia Gandhi in Raebareli and Congress president Rahul Gandhi in Amethi.

Such kind of mutual adjustment points to the understanding that already exists among the top leaders of the main parties in UP on the one hand and the Congress on the other. Though Sonia Gandhi did not mention this when she spoke at Raebareli, what she largely meant is that politics is an art of the possible. And this was proven to be so by the sheer turn of events that marked the end of the Vajpayee regime in 2004.

This was possible then despite the late BJP veteran having been quite a popular leader, frequent use of slogans like ‘India Shining’ and frequent use of retorts like TINA (there is no alternative) or ‘Feel Good’ factor by the BJP in a bid to browbeat and deter the Opposition while attempting to scrape through the 2004 elections.

Despite taking to active politics only a few years before this, Sonia Gandhi could then put up a formidable front against the BJP as Congress president and UPA chairperson. About a year before the 2004 electoral showdown, the Congress top brass had met at Shimla to endorse forming a coalition of parties under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi to take on the BJP. Soon, the Congress in alliance with other parties, destroyed the myth of the BJP’s invincibility.

Thus, Sonia Gandhi’s latest remarks remind of both her pre-poll as well as post-poll efforts in 2004 to push the BJP out of power. She has not only served a warning this time to the Modi government from her constituency but also tried to give a wakeup call to the electorate and parties opposed to the BJP.