In Tripura the Congress Party has suffered a serious attrition with senior Congressmen and sitting MLAs including the leader of the opposition in the Tripura Assembly resigning his post. Leaders of frontal organizations in Tripura have followed suit. This was after the Congress decided to tie up with the CPI(M) in Bengal to counter the Trinamool Congress in the State Assembly elections. The Congress has had a similar tie up with the Communists in Kerala. With just 44 MPs in a House of 552 members, the Congress is reduced to third or fourth player which is forced to ally with regional political parties as it did in Bihar (Maha-Gatbandhan) with Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United). In Bengal the Congress has lost any foothold it had because it had earlier aligned with Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress during the UPA-2 regime, until 2012 when Banerjee withdrew support on some contentious issues. The CPI(M) had earlier supported the UPA-1 regime but withdrew support on the nuclear deal. That had created quite an embarrassment for the Congress Party and pushed it to look for other allies to continue to remain in power.
The UPA-2 was ridden with scams galore from the 2-G to Coalgate. These are still under investigation. And now comes the Agusta-Westland helicopter deal where an Italian Court has pronounced the bribe givers in this deal guilty of cheating the nation. The Italian Court has with it a list of documents which indicate who the bribe takers in India are. It is now for the Indian investigating agencies to get their act together and not be caught napping or colluding to protect those in power. India’s plight has been that it investigating agencies have been used as pawns by the government in power. They have lost credibility and spine to do anything better. Now that unsavoury aspects of the Agusta Westaland deal are spilling out every day and links to the Gandhi family are clearly emerging despite the bravado put up by Congress party honchos, it remains to be seen whether the Modi Government is actually serious about eradicating the scams that afflict this country or if this is yet another witch-hunt against the Nehru-Gandhi family as is being alleged.
Coming to the health of the Congress Party in Meghalaya, here too things don’t look too bright. The performance of the Government leaves much to be desired and party workers don’t seem upbeat by what is happening at the national level. They have all gone on the defensive. But how far they can defend the first family remains to be seen. The bluster has to give and the truth must emerge because on that hinges national security.