Opinion

Rahul reminds us of the ape in the Panchatantra

The Congress has increasingly relied on political campaigns and controversies against rivals while facing its own legal and organisational challenges

Kumar Chellappan

September 1, 2026

The Congress has increasingly relied on political campaigns and controversies against rivals while facing its own legal and organisational challenges

Inside Congress’s political playbook

The Indian National Congress, owned and operated by Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, and Priyanka Gandhi, has an exclusive Dirty Tricks Department specialized in peddling fake narratives, blatant lies, and character assassination of rivals in other political parties. Though the DTD has been functioning since the days of Jawaharlal Nehru, details of the ugly and nauseating work it did became known during the tenure of Rajiv Gandhi as prime minister (1985-1989). When Rajiv Gandhi failed in countering the corruption charges against his government on the Bofors Gun deal, the HDW submarine kick-off, and a host of other allegations, he, along with his close associates, unleashed the DTD against some of the opposition leaders, including V P Singh, who left the Congress and launched the Janata Dal in 1988.

One of the allegations made by the DTD volunteers, which included the “greatest intellectual of all times” and was known in political circles as Mylapore Damodaran (Maida for short), was against V P Singh’s US-based son. The charge was that he had illegal accounts with foreign banks, but this wild allegation backfired, and the Congress leaders were seen running for cover to save themselves from the repercussions of the baseless claim.

After a couple of years, it was the turn of L K Advani, the BJP’s top leader, to face the ire of the DTD. This time, they came out with the “Jain Hawala diary” in which the names of some of the prominent leaders of the opposition were featured as recipients of kick-backs/ commission from a businessman based in Delhi. A case was filed against the persons listed in the dairy and Advani approached the court with a unique request. His plea to the court was to speed up the prosecution proceedings against him so that he could devote his entire time to taking up public causes instead of waiting for years to get his name cleared by the Court. See the differences between modern-day charges and the good old days. A mother and her mentally unbalanced son are using all the weapons in their armory to sabotage the legal proceedings against them in the National Herald case in which they are listed as the prime accused. The INC, whether in government or not, resorts to all tricks to tame, maim, and silence their rivals.

Besides the leaders of the opposition parties, the DTD chooses leaders of the Congress who are considered a potential threat to the Royal Family members. How many of us remember the tragic death of L N Misra, the then Union Railway Minister at Samastipur in 1975? The assassination was full of inadequate allegations and unsubstantiated claims by the prosecution. Some poor Anand Maarg monks were arrested on charges that they were responsible for Mishra’s assassination. The prosecution claimed that these monks belonging to Anand Maarg were upset over the arrest of their guru Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar (popularly known by the name Anandamurthi) in connection with a murder. The Anand Margis wanted to put the government under pressure and thereby get the release of Sarkar from jail. To the ordinary folks, this sounded quite rubbish. It took almost four decades for the court to complete the trial and sentence the accused. It was in December 2014 that the court sentenced five Anand Margis to life imprisonment for the assassination of Mishra. But the Delhi High Court granted bail to the accused, and their appeal against the sentencing is being heard by the court.

The DTD is still operational and alive and kicking now. The said department is full of court jesters and persons with no common sense at all. During 2014 to 2026, the DTD had hit the headlines with allegations of Rafale fighter aircraft deal and a host of other issues which were widely publicized by the ever-obliging Lutyens media. The Rafale scam fizzled out, the Judge Laya allegations got vaporized, and these were followed by unsubstantiated and worthless scams including the Pegasus phone-tapping measures and the Epstein sex scam. All these issues resulted in the total washout of the parliamentary proceedings because the Leader of Opposition was adamant on his demand that the government should leave office. But he was unaware of the fact that to occupy the Prime Minister’s chair, he and the Congress party should have at least 200 seats in Lok Sabha.

Though the Congress generated a lot of sound and fury over the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) with claims that the instruments were manipulated to ensure the victory of the BJP candidates in the hustings, they could not furnish even a single incident from anywhere in the country to corroborate the claim. Many times Rahul Gandhi declared that he would drop “hydrogen or atomic bombs” over the BJP; he failed to burst even an ordinary cracker, and the EVM allegations too disappeared from the public domain. Now here comes the news that even the US is seriously thinking of deploying EVMs in its federal elections and the presidential polls.

It has been proved time and again that the INC we see today has no semblance of the party which was founded in 1885. The original Congress was a collective of dedicated and devoted leaders whose only mission was to liberate the country from the shackles of colonial rule. They also wanted India to emerge as an economic superpower. But within years of the country becoming a free republic, the Congress itself was hijacked by the Nehru-Gandhi family, from which the party has not been freed. The original Congress had the services of leaders like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Morarji Desai, Biju Patnaik, Kamaraj, and the like. These leaders disappeared over the years, and the party became a family property of Sonia Gandhi and her children Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Vadra. These three are not going to save the Congress from the morass it has stuck in. The Gandhi household is surrounded by a coterie of self-seekers and sycophants. It is unlikely that the family would be liberated from the influence of this selfish group that has only vested interests.

The confusion that has set in the Congress regarding reservation of seats for women in parliament and the delimitation exercise is enough proof that all is not well within the Congress party. The party is yet to understand the procedures involved in reconvening the parliament after the Speaker and chairman of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha announced that the monsoon session of parliament was being wound up sine die. The Congress -led Opposition has disrupted the entire session over non-issues.

The Leader of Opposition (Lok Sabha) looks like an ape from the Panchatantra Stories. The ape’s testicles got crushed when he tried to sit on a log which was being cut to make furniture. This is the present position of the Yuva Raja, who thinks that he would be able to win over the voters by abusing and humiliating Narendra Modi and the RSS day in and day out.

What we see now is a rudderless Opposition party struggling to get a mooring over the landscape of India. The bugle for the electoral battle in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand has been sounded. What is the status of the Congress Party in the elections to be fought in these states?

One is reminded of the last scene of the movie Satranj Ke Khiladi directed by the legendary Satyajit Ray…

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2. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.

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